


Of Dilemmas and their Cost | Part I

by quills_at_dawn



Series: The Minutiae of Right [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassin's Creed: Rogue, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Historical, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-10 09:39:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 58,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11124549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quills_at_dawn/pseuds/quills_at_dawn
Summary: .“Now, Master Cormac, we can either do this the easy way or the hard way. You can give me what I want and I’ll let you ‘escape’, free to go back to your Mentor, or I can take what I want before sending you back to the barracks to share the same fate as your Brothers - prison or hard labour, if not worse. Before you try for a third option, I'd only remind you that I'm armed whereas you're not and that a word from me or mine will see all your friends strung up before dawn.”____________________________After stealing the manuscript and falling off a cliff at the Davenport homestead, Shay washes ashore and makes his way to New York, hoping to hide in the crowd until he's strong enough to make a full getaway. Liam and two other assassins track him down and are about to take him back to the homestead when they're caught by a city patrol and locked up.And to make things worse, who should turn up but Haytham Kenway? What will the alpha Grand Master do to his rival's omega partner? How will this affect Liam and the rest of the Brotherhood?Liam, Shay and Haytham's POVs for now.





	1. Liam | The Capture

**Author's Note:**

> *SPOILERS* for all of AC Rogue, AC III and possibly the Forsaken novel.
> 
> Canon-divergent insofar that any a/b/o fic is alternate universe and because I've taken liberties with the timeline.  
> Mostly follows the storyline in AC Rogue until Shay leaves the Assassins but advances Haytham's return from Europe (and Reginald Birch's death) by about two years. 
> 
> A/b/o dynamics but no soul bonds so if that's what you specifically look for you may (will) be disappointed - just a heads up.  
> The first chapter of the Additional Materials part of this series lays out how the a/b/o mechanics work in this universe. 
> 
> I've used the rape/dub-con tags and warnings. These reflect modern sensibilities and the fic is set at a time when wives were considered property and marital rape was impossible by definition.  
> Please, please, please be aware of this if you're uncomfortable with issues of consent. 
> 
> Tags will be updated as chapters are added. They are also used as warnings so please read at your own discretion. If you think I've missed anything, please let me know and I'll happily update them. This is all still new to me. 
> 
> Disclaimer: Assassin's Creed: Rogue, Assassin's Creed III, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag & Freedom Cry, Assassin's Creed Forsaken and their respective characters, storylines, everything, the entire glorious trans-media mess of it belongs to Ubisoft.

****

artwork by [geral-lenix](https://geral-lenix.tumblr.com/)

* * *

 

**LIAM**

 

_New York, December 1755_

 

As one of the wagon wheels finds a pothole, Shay’s head hits the floor of the wagon with a thud just before mine bangs the top of it. The manacles pull at my wrists when I try to raise a hand to my head and the two Redcoatslocked in with us glance at me resentfully - the rattling of my chains interrupted their conversation.

“He’ll get hurt. Please do something.”

They glance at Shay then one of them - the great big brute - shrugs.

“He’ll be fine. We’re almost there.”

Shifting onto the edge of my bench, I manage to tuck the toe of my boot under Shay’s head just before we ride over another bump in the road and my head hits the beams again. I’ll be seeing double for a week.

Poor Shay. That crack to his head should have woken him but he’s too far gone, which is why they just laid him out of the floor down the middle of the wagon. He looks a mess, covered in mud and filthy slush off the streets and in fairness to the Redcoats that’s all he looks - dirty and no worse than he would after two nights spent at the pub without going home to change. But I know that under the muck all over his torn clothes, he’s also half starved and broken. There’s a splash of blood on his cheek from a cut, a growing bruise beneath it darkens the side of his face almost as I watch and I think I heard one of his ribs crack earlier. I need to get him back to the Homestead.

It took us over a week to track Shay down after he left the homestead. We would have found him sooner too if he hadn’t washed up in such an out of the way place. The couple who found him, caught up in one of their nets like a piece of driftwood, live in a tiny cottage on the outskirt of an isolated community of fishermen - the kind of people who don’t like outsiders and answer most questions with a grunt. They lied to three of our people before someone admitting to the fourth (one of Chevalier’s men, a fisherman from a nearby village) that aye, someone had washed up there days ago, and by then Shay had moved on. Shay’s a well-known captain in these parts and he’d asked them not to say anything.

How he made it all the way to New York I’ll never understand and he couldn’t have made it back to the homestead by land, not even on horseback, which is why I told Hope she should go on without us and I’d follow by sea in the _Morrigan_.

I thought this could all be fixed. Shay can be reasoned with, he’s never been stubborn in that way. I didn’t listen to him and that was a mistake. I should have listened to him. He’s impulsive, aye, but there isn’t a bad bone in him. What he did was misguided but he must’ve meant well. And we shouldn’t have sent him to Lisbon alone, I told Achilles so at the time. Anyone would be upset after living through something like that. We’ll give him a few weeks rest here at home, I’ll spend more time with him, and he’ll soon be his old self again.

It would have been so easy if Shay hadn’t gotten away from us.

Looking through the barred windows, I watch New York rumble by.

The snow flurries we woke to were just a warning, it’s now snowing heavily enough that my clothes are soaked through and cold from the half hour I spent outside. And there’s worse to come if the sky’s anything to go by. I wonder if Hope and the others made it back to the homestead all right.

Through the snow, I can just make out some buildings I recognise in the lower part of New York. We’re probably heading to the large barracks at the southern tip of the city.

A glance at Thompson and Caraway who are sitting opposite me tells me they’re worried too. Unlike the makeshift encampment at the northern border of the city, this established southern one is where the munitions and weapons are stockpiled. It’s large and heavily fortified, filled with every soldier not on active duty and surrounded by open sea on all sides but one.

If I’d been alone I’d see this as an opportunity to study their fortifications and see what they have in the way of equipment. Alone, I could have risked trying to overpower the guards and slip away to steal a uniform, quiet and discreet ’til I could get myself out.

But I’m not alone and there will be no getting out. Three of us against the bulk of the British troops in the region - no, we can’t get out fighting. Our only chance would be to break out of this wagon before we enter the barracks but even I can’t break the shackles on my wrists and ankles and I doubt the others will be able to get out of their. Besides, we wouldn’t get very far running through streets shin-deep in snow with Shay on our backs. We can’t carry him away and we can’t leave him.

But we have to get out somehow. The jäger now sitting up front gave me an odd look when they were loading us into the wagon and while I can’t stop him from getting a second look at me, I’ll do everything I can to make sure he doesn’t get a third.

“Lads, there’s no need for this. It was just a lot of silly Irishmen in high spirits after two drinks too many.”

Another bored look from the two Redcoats and this time the regular answers.

“Pipe down. We’ll just take your names down for our records then you can go.”

We all sway and Shay’s head rolls off my foot when the wagon stops.

The jäger is by the door when we get out but he barely looks at us, busy giving orders to a nervous young regular.

Shay they pick up by his hands and feet, swing him out of the wagon to dump him onto a waiting stretcher. They wouldn’t treat an omega like that, they must take him for a beta the way most people do - thank God for that at least.

Soon we’re in an underground room, one wall lined with cells, and the jäger is back, standing on the third step up as he oversees proceedings. Shay they leave in a heap on a straw litter and the jäger looks at me before nodding at Shay.

“What’s his name?”

“Patrick O’Brien.”

“And yours?”

“Connor McCormack.”

A sudden scuffle, the crash of metal and turning I find Thompson and Caraway already locked into a cell and all seven of the Redcoats have their weapons trained on me.

Now the jäger comes down the stairs, his pistol ready and he indicates one of the empty cells.

“Now, get in without a fuss, you can see there’s no point.”

“There’s no need for this, lads.”

“We’ll decide that. Now, if you please.”

“But we haven’t done anything!”

A couple of the Redcoats take a step back, rifles coming to bear, and I force myself to speak more quietly.

“It was just a fight between drunk ’n’ foolish Irishmen. No harm done. Patrick will be right as rain when he’s slept it off but we should get him back.”

“He can sleep it off here.”

The pistol is now aimed straight at my head.

I back into the cell but the pistol doesn’t move.

“Right up to the back wall, if you please.”

I do as he asks and watch as they clang the heavy door shut.

A curt nod from the jäger and the others move Shay into the empty cell between me and the other two. A small, sharp cry of pain from Shay as they set the litter down.

The jäger goes to kneel by him and speaks quietly.

“You’re safe, boy. What is your name?”

Shay stares up at him, dazed, before mumbling his answer and closing his eyes again.

“Shay… Patrick Cormac.”

“Very well. We’ll talk again later.”

“Put him in here with me, I’ll take care of him and I’ll make no trouble.”

“A few hours sleep will set your friend to rights, just as you said. And there’s no need to be angry with him, Master O’Brien, we knew who you were before he gave himself away.”

After ensuring we’re securely locked up, most of the Redcoats file out, just one regular is left behind at the door, seated on a chair. The others are nearby, though, I can still hear them talking.

Thompson and Caraway look at me from behind their bars and mine.

Shay lies between us on his thin litter of hay, curled up in pain even in sleep.

I hate it, seeing him so exposed and vulnerable. He’s cold too, very pale, his lips turning slightly blue, his nails purple. He’ll get colder. His clothes are in tatters and that half-inch of hay won’t protect him from the cold. Or the damp. Even I can feel it and no surprise, considering how exposed to the sea this place is.

As worried as I am about him, I hope Shay does continue to sleep because if he opens that big mouth of his and says anything to contradict my tale of a harmless drunken brawl between friends we’ll be in even bigger trouble than this. To think we had the mission all wrapped up and nothing leftto do but get ourselves back to the Homestead.

Sinking to the floor I feel the cold all at once. The cold of the hard, uneven paving stones, the cold of the thick metal bars that smell of dried blood and rust and that separate me from Shay. How many hours have I spent watching over him as he sleeps in the lifetime we’ve spent together? Tens? Hundreds? Maybe even thousands. After all, I started before he was even born.

Minutes trickle by and the guard is relieved.

They’re bound to feed us at some point, I’ll take my chance then. I can take down a guard or two then free the others. Dressed as Redcoats, under cover of darkness, we can pretend to take Shay to the infirmary then quietly break out of the encampment. The fortifications are weakest in the eastern end of the camp and we have a base not too far away along the harbour but there’s a heavily-manned watchtower there and we can’t take to the water, not even for a couple of minutes. No, we’ll have to go right to the other side and hope that once we’re over the fence we can find some of the West Port Gang to help us back to their base where I can send word to Hope.

Shay’s hasn’t moved. He’s so pale and still that you’d take him for dead if it weren’t for his laboured breathing.

As I watch, his fingers twitch then his eyes open slowly. I’m the first thing he sees and he turns away slightly, closing his eyes again.

“Shay…”

I’ve barely gotten his name out when two jägers step in, seeming to wait for something or someone.

Who becomes immediately clear when the door opens and I sense before I see who it is.

 _Shite_.

Haytham _bloody_ Kenway, rising star of the Templar Order, Grand Master of the Colonial Rite - cunning, ruthless, dedicated and devious, relentless and unscrupulous. The youngest Grand Master in the history of the Order, sent to replace Lawrence Washington and build up their Colonial Rite. If we’d known then the bane that is Grand Master Haytham Kenway, we’d have let Washington live out the rest of his natural life.

Sure as I recognised him, he will recognise me, we’ve met many times before. He’ll take me in for questioning unless he forgoes that for… But no, he won’t miss the chance to press me for every last one of the Brotherhood’s secrets. That’s all right. I’m no likely to break and once he takes me out of this place I’ll find a way to get a message to Achilles so he can send Kesegowaase or Hope, or both, to fetch Shay back from here.

Meanwhile Kenway struts to the other end of the room, looking like a French stage actress in crimson silk, countless layers of lace and three pounds of gold thread, hands locked behind his back as usual. He turns and runs his gaze over our cells but without even really looking at us. I know he’s recognised me though he makes no obvious sign of it. Good.

Looking bored and like he can barely be bothered with us, he nods vaguely in my direction.

“That one, the dark one in the centre. Bound and gagged.”

_What?_

_Oh God, he knows!_

“Wait! You know who I am! Take me instead!”

Shay winces as they pull him to his feet and drag him out of the cell, still looking dazed and unsteady.

Kenway turns away so I bang on the bars.

“Not him! Take me.”

“A charming offer, Master O’Brien, but I’m afraid you’re not my type.”

He doesn’t even look at me, just throwing the words over his shoulders.

“If you touch him I'll kill you!”

“Oh, I have no doubt you'll keep trying to, Master O'Brien.”

Oh and this with that long-suffering, smug condescension of his, as irritating as that ridiculous tricorne.

As Kenway goes off to talk with the Redcoats and they pack up Shay’s things, Shay stands just outside the cells, stubbornly staring at his feet.

What can I do? How can I reassure him? Surely he’s worried about what a Templar might do to an Assassin? An _alpha_ Grand Master to an _omega_ prisoner.

I move closer to the bars, whispering and trying to sound gentle.

“Shay? Don’t worry, we’ll come for you, we won’t let him hurt you. Tell him you know nothing, that you’ve just joined. We’ll get you out, don’t worry. I’ve never let anyone hurt you, have I? Shay?”

Nothing.

“I’m sorry for everything, Shay, I didn’t mean it. I got angry. We’ve been friends since we were children, we can make things right again. We can make everything right again, I swear it. Anything you want.”

Kenway comes back, an amused look on his smug, Pom face. Shay looks like nothing just now, he’s covered in mud and blood, his face is bruised, his hair matted, his clothes are tattered and loose from too many days’ wear. But there’s still something about him, it’s like they can smell it on him, and Kenway pauses a moment to look him over the way so many men do - down then up again, slowly, offensively and then a small secret smile.

“Shay, there’s a way out of this. You can still make things right, Shay. Or keep quiet and I’ll make things right with Achilles. I won’t abandon you, Shay.”

“Come along.”

Shay, like the reckless fool he is, follows Kenway, limping, and as he turns away I see his face and when I recognise his cold, stubborn expression I realise I haven’t reached him at all.

I crash into the bars again.

“Shay, we’ll come for you, I swear it! We’ll come for you! Shay! Shay, if you talk, I’ll destroy the _Morrigan_ myself! I’ll take her to pieces and burn her! Do you hear me?!”


	2. Shay | The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haytham carries Shay off and offers him a deal. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Shay accepts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: dub-con ahead. 
> 
> Shay's POV.

**SHAY**

 

_New York, December 1755_

_When…? How did I get here?_

I remember getting away from Fort Arsenal and Liam and the others chasin’ me, fighting, seein’ stars after that mighty punch in the face and then… ah aye, someone did say somethin’ about Redcoats just before I had the wind knocked outta me. They must’ve caught up to us.

_Where are they taking me?_

We’re following that man, the one Liam spoke to. As I’m dragged - practically carried - up a flight of stairs by a couple o’ redcoats, my foot doesn’t quite clear the last step but I barely stumble.

I ache _everywhere_. What doesn’t sting throbs, what doesn’t throb burns, and what isn’t sore is stiff with cold and pain. Tryin’ to hide my limp and I’ve already bitten my lip nearly to blood from tryin’ not to make a sound. I’m still upright but only the way a felled tree hangs there before toppling. Don’t want any o’ this lot to know how bad it is though.

_Who is that man?_

Can barely even make him out half the time, he’s all blurry-like when he moves. We step outside and I’m blinded by the light of the campfires and the frozen snowflakes in the sharp wind. I didn’t get a good look at him back at the barracks but I did see enough that I know I don’t recognise him. He and Liam know each other, but Liam’s been all over so that doesn’t help me any. The Redcoats obey him without question but he’s not military. Expensive clothes, _really_ expensive clothes, British and rich by the look ’n’ sound of him. Someone from the Governor’s office? Never seen Liam lose his head like that. Can’t be good.

A sharp pain in my chest as I’m handed up into the nicest coach I’ve ever seen - four horses the spittin’ image of each other and identical shade of shinin’ chestnut, a crest I don’t recognise on the door, the inside all plushly done up with more silk and velvet than I’ve seen in a year and benches with padding five inches thick at least. It’s also pretty dark in here, thank god, and the booming ’n’ crashing in my head dulls to a steady throb.

They close the door behind us and suddenly we’re cut off from the rest of the world.

I don’t know where we’re going, who this man is, what he wants from me. I don’t even know what Liam told the Redcoats. Do they know what we are?

A sharp rap on one of the carriage sides and we’re off - no idea where to.

I don’t dare look at the man, I don’t want him to ask me questions, so I stare at our feet as we sit in silence. The snow on his boots is melting and the droplets slide down the black leather, so polished it shines like glass. My own boots - what’s left of them - look like they’re made from a sheaf of old papers stuck together with muck, shapeless, muddy, scuffed to the last thread in places, an inch of sole hanging free from the toe of my left one. Both squelch even when I don’t move. In a satin-lined box on the far side, are a pair of smart leather shoes lined with fur. He must have been out somewhere nice.

“Look at me.”

God, he looks expensive. Even in the low light the silk of his clothes gleams with intricate scrolls and feathers embroidered in gold and silver thread. A cravat knotted high and that tricorne loaded with white plumes and whose corner throws a shadow over one cheek.

But it’s not his fancy clothes and posh accent that worry me. Most of him is wrapped up in his cloak, a dark oilskin cloak lined with glossy beaver pelts. That cloak is like the boots — it reminds me of the shoes that he’s _not_ wearing, that he may be a rich aristocrat but he’s also something else, something that upset Liam.

He reaches over, slips his thumb behind the gag, pulls it down and slips it off.

“There you go… I am Haytham Kenway. What is your name?”

_Haytham Kenway?!_

“Shay Cormac... _Grand Master_ Haytham Kenway?”

“That's right.”

_Shite!_

“Shay Cormac, is it? A fitting name.”

Now he’s smiling and it makes his eyes crinkle. A Templar with laughter lines?

Can he really be Haytham Kenway, Grand Master of the Templar Order?

I can believe he’s a Templar and a high-ranking one - that’d explain the Redcoats’ behaviour and Liam’s reaction - but the Grand Master? He’s young - too young and good-looking - to be a Templar, and especially a Grand Master. All the important Templars I’ve known were old men. Achilles and Liam hate all Templars but they talk about Haytham Kenway like he’s the greatest evil to plague Humanity, second only to Satan himself. Liam spits his name out like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, says he’s the worst o' the lot, that he’s more determined and more ruthless than the others, that if we don’t stop him he’ll be head of the Order someday and that when he is the Order will be unstoppable.

Why would he take me instead of Liam? Liam is the only one he needs. Liam probably knows everything Achilles does, whereas I… Hell, I’m not even sure what day of the week it is.

“Achilles doesn't confide in me, I'm still in training.”

“I expected as much. Tell me, Master Cormac, is Liam O'Brien a particular friend of yours?”

“I... suppose, but he never tells me anything either.”

“ _Sir_.”

I stare at him a moment. His voice is so soft and pleasant but his tone is crisp.

“I suppose so, sir.”

“And what is the exact nature of your relationship?”

“We're childhood friends...”

Should I tell him? Will it help or make things worse?

He frowns slightly and that look of impending disappointment _burns_ any thought of lying right out of me.

“And we're intended. Sir.”

“I see.”

He studies me again and it’s obvious he doesn’t think I’m much of a threat.

I don’t blame him. I must look like nothing. I’ve been hiding for weeks. New York was the nearest city to the place where I washed up after… the fall, the only place I could get myself to in the state I was in - _am_ in. But a lot o’ people know me here so I can’t be seen or I’ll be recognised. I never sleep in the same place twice, I could only risk stealing or scavenging for what I needed to survive at night so I don’t risk being recognised. I haven’t bathed properly in days and after weeks of wear my clothes are falling apart and the beating I took today won’t have fixed anythin’.

“What are you going to do with me, sir?”

He eyes me a moment longer before answering.

“I've had a hard week and since my schedule is lighter than usual the next few days, I'd like some recreation.”

_Ah. Of course._

A sharp pain in my shoulder and I realise I’ve backed up against the wall.

Aye, that’s a Templar all right. And a predator.

I should have realised he was an alpha, he has alpha written all over him. It drives Liam crazy that I don’t notice these things. Now I remember why.

Back when I lived on the streets, coaches like this one would stop on corners, the person inside would offer us - us defenceless omegas and girls - money, food, shelter for the night. Back then I never accepted but now here I am.

I can feel Kenway’s gaze on me - not heavy, not disturbing, but lazy and amused and somehow that seems more threatening and I can’t look at him so I keep staring outside and I can just make out where we are in the darkness. East Village, up near what used to be large country houses for the rich ’til the city crept up to them. Now they’re city houses for the filthy rich. Right across town from the barracks. Isolated. Nobody much walks around here, except for the regular patrols, nothing but carriages in this part of town. And street lights.

That’s why they let him take me. Because he’s rich, British and connected and I’m just a poor colonist, a criminal and an omega. Nobody will call him to account if I disappear. They’ll have an idea what happened, and they won’t care.

“Now, Master Cormac, we can either do this the easy way or the hard way. You can _give_ me what I want and I’ll let you ‘escape’, free to go back to your Mentor, or I can _take_ what I want before sending you back to the barracks to share the same fate as your Brothers - prison or hard labour, if not worse. Before you try for a third option, I'd only remind you that I'm armed whereas you're not and that a word from me or mine will see all your friends strung up before dawn.”

I stare at him a moment.

Can I trust him? And what is he really asking for? The sort of thing Liam does? Or something more? Those other omegas I knew - some of them came back in tears, some bloodied and bruised, others barely able to walk or even stand, some were broken and some never came back at all.

Suddenly I realise it doesn’t matter. I can’t be sent back to those barracks, to Liam. Anything’s better than that. That would mean death - one way or the other. And I can’t die yet. Not just yet.

Kenway’s watching me closely and when he next speaks he sounds gentler.

“All I want is some shared pleasure and company before I let you go so I'd much prefer the easy way but of course it must be up to you.”

My throat’s parched, so’s my mouth.

If I agree and Kenway keeps his word, I might just have a chance to disappear somewhere. And I’ve had a hard week too. A few hours in a warm house won’t hurt me, even if Kenway does.

“You’ll just let me go?”

“If you come willingly and do as I ask. We'll say you escaped."

“And… you’ll ask nothing else of me?”

“No secrets. Just your favours.”

God, my mouth is dry. I nod but I have to run my tongue over my lips before I can speak.

“The easy way.”

The stern look melts away and he looks _so pleased_. 

“Good.”

I shiver at the sound of his voice, a deep purr of satisfaction. He seems _so_ pleased with me.

The carriage makes a sharper turn and looking out I recognise where we are. We’re coming up to one of the villas on the lake. I came out here a few times with Liam. It was built by East India people who moved away more than a year before and it’d been empty ever since - no takers, too expensive. Since it was abandoned and falling into disrepairHope took it over and started turning it into a base since nobody was really watching anymore and she thought once the base was set up nobody would bother to take it back. I hadn’t known we’d lost it, although it explains why Hope was at Fort Arsenal. She must be furious.

We pass the gate then swing around what sounds like a large fountain then suddenly pass from darkness into light and we come to a stop _inside_ the building, in a wide covered corridor with statues in alcoves and a marble floor cut through by a paved lane for the carriage.

Kenway unbinds my wrists before getting out of the carriage. I follow him, biting my lip at the pain in my chest as I step down, but it’s warmer out here than I’ve been in weeks and we’re not even inside yet.

A stiff butler and three brace of footmen are at the door.

“Barrington, this is Master Cormac, he'll be our guest for a few days. Come along, Shay, let’s get some of your things off.”

While they take his cloak and hat, my muddy coat and boots, he talks with his butler who calls him by name, then he collects his messages and orders a bath, a simple dinner and a barber.

My head’s still spinning when he motions me to follow him into a large room with an enormous fireplace - his study, I suppose. After closing the door behind us, he goes over to the desk and throws down the messages. He shrugs off his coat and leaves it hanging on a chair, bright and heavy. His waistcoat comes off next.

Crossing over to the couch, he sits then throws a fat pillow onto the carpet, between his feet.

“Now, why don't you prove your good faith to me while we wait for your bath?”

A pillow. Why didn’t I ever think of that? Woulda saved me a lot of skin off my knees. I glance at the door. Should I lock it?

“Don’t worry, nobody ever comes in without permission.”

As I settle onto the pillow, I bite my lip again. That blow Liam gave me knocked the wind right outta me and whenever I breathe too deeply it’s like being stabbed in the chest. An ice trickle of fear and dread down my spine as I remember what Liam does to me even in his more careful moods. I have to keep Kenway happy.

“My hands are cold, sir.”

“I expect the rest of you is too. How considerate of you, Shay.”

He takes my hands and slips them under his shirt, right against his skin, so warm it almost burns my fingers. Warm and hard. He’s nothing like the fat, soft aristocrat I expected the Grand Master to be and when he sits up to pour out a glass of water from the carafe on the small table at his elbow I can feel his muscles tense easily.

“You’re frozen. Come.”

After he’s let me drink we stay quiet for a while and he just watches me as I rest my head on one of my arms stretched out along his thighs. Hard thighs. And warm.

He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry but I don’t want him to think I’m trying to get out of anything.

“I think I’m all right now.”

“Very well.”

As I undo his breeches, he touches my hair. But lightly, like. It’s all dirty, knotted and tangled, and so he moves his fingers down to run them along the shell of my ear. I expected violence or… nothing - I guess - but not _this_. It doesn’t stay on the surface like a punch or a blow, it sinks straight into my bones then scatters into my blood and soars back into my skin, I can feel it in my hair and in my nails and in my teeth. I think he wants me to look at him but I can’t do it.

So instead I focus on him but when I ease him out of his breeches I taste bile. He’s big. Bigger than Liam. As big as Kesegowaase. And burning hot.

I think I can manage. And if I’m lucky and do a very good job, there’s always the chance he won’t hurt me later. Or at least for not as long. How many times have I done this for Liam with just the same hope?

I tighten my hands into fists a moment to stop them from trembling then get to work. I can do this. I know what to do. Doing _this_ won’t hurt me.

Kenway’s gaze is heavy on me as he trails a nail down my jawline and when it reaches just under my chin I can’t help looking up as I continue to stroke him. He’s smiling, looking so pleased, and so warm from the firelight and candlelight. So different from Liam who keeps his eyes screwed shut and looks like he doesn’t want to enjoy it, _resents_ enjoying it. When we’re done he can barely look at me. I think he only lets me do it because he thinks _I_ enjoy doing it to him.

“Take your time, Shay, I’m enjoying this and it’ll be a while yet before your bath is ready.”

Kenway touches my hair again a moment. He’s enjoying this but he’ll need more so I cup his knot in my hand, squeezing and pulling gently, and touch my tongue to him.

“There you go. Slowly, Shay, there’s no rush.”

Stupidly I feel a flicker of relief at his praise and the tone of his voice as he says my name. I know now that he’s not going to force me or hurt me or even rush me, and so I slow down and settle to the task at hand.

A hiss when I use my teeth on him and I foggily realise I probably should have asked permission first. But when I look up at him there’s no reproach, no hesitation, just enjoyment, and - what is that? I put my mouth to him, pressing my tongue into the slit there, teasing him before taking him deeper into my mouth. I’m used to Liam and though Kenway’s bigger I think I can just about manage it.

Oh, he’s enjoying this, he can’t take his eyes off me, still smiling faintly though now his lips are just slightly parted. And that look in his eyes, like I’m the best thing that’s happened to him all week.

Now he closes his eyes and leans back but I know what that means. He groans when I take him into my throat. I know he didn’t expect this much - this is something that takes practice, not everyone can do it - but I know he’ll enjoy it, _really_ enjoy it. And for a real treat I slip my hand into his breeches and inch my fingers behind his knot and press a spot just behind it.

Kenway shudders and I see his fists clench as he comes, but slowly, making it easy for me to swallow down his seed. Didn’t know one could do that. He must do this sort of thing a lot.

I tidy him up and tuck him away while he tries to catch his breath and when I look up at him I find his cheeks pink with pleasure, lips parted, eyes glowing. Grey eyes. Light grey eyes with some green in them. Lucky.

“Thank you, Shay. That was extremely enjoyable.”

He cups my face gently, running his thumb over my cheek then my ear and I fold an arm over his knee and rest my chin on it. He half smiles and now there’s something else in his eyes, something lazy and heavy like the hand he rests on my head.

“Do you provide this service for Liam O’Brien too?”

“I do.”

“I do…?”

“I do, sir.”

“Anyone else?”

“No, sir.”

“I find it hard to credit that O’Brien could have taught you. He’s always struck me as being somewhat unimaginative.”

No malice, just lazy curiosity. He runs his thumb over my lips gently.

“Nobody really taught me. I just do what I enjoy having done to me.”

He smiles and that deep purr is back in his voice when he next speaks.

“And who taught you what you enjoy?”

“I think… it was mostly the girls in Havana.”

He bursts into laughter at this, eyes sparkling - such a warm, rich sound.

“Well, I think we all owe a great debt of gratitude to those ladies. Come here, Shay, let me taste myself on you.”

_What?_

He dampens his handkerchief with water from the nearby carafe and I’ve barely joined him on the couch when he gives me a sharp tug and I find myself laid across his lap, back resting against his arm, propped up against the armrest. He tips my head up gently and starts pushing my hair out of my face.

“I’m getting you dirty, sir.”

“Don’t worry about that. There. Let me have a look at you. I think I saw- That’s a nasty cut, Shay. How did you come by it?”

“I fell.”

He wipes a little more dirt from my face and the handkerchief comes away stained with blood as well as dirt.

“And this?”

“A fight. It’s nothing.”

It’ll heal eventually, don’t think anything’s broken, but I still have a slight ringing in my ears from that blow and whenever I jar it I go blind for an instant.

“Was it the Redcoats?”

I hesitate but when he starts to frown I feel the same hot chill go through me.

“No.”

“Who then?”

“Liam.”

“But you’re his-?”

I don’t want to be Liam’s anything so I cut him off.

“We fought.”

He gently turns my head to look at my cheek again, frowning, and I feel a wave ofheat at betraying Liam.

“I see. Any other injuries I should know about?”

“Nothing serious.”

He doesn’t ask more as he starts to carefully wipe the dirt off my face but his frown deepens the more he cleans off. I must be a mess. Not just today’s injuries but all those I’ve had in the last weeks must be visible under all the dirt. He looks almost angry now. Not the way Liam does though. Liam gets annoyed-angry when I turn up covered in blood and dirt because he takes it as a sign of carelessness. Kenway looks cold-angry. He might change his mind about the deal we made and send me back to the barracks if he thinks he can’t use me. And it’s my only chance to get away.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“What isn’t?”

Oh, his voice is so clipped now and his expression is harder than it’s been ’tip now.

“Any of it.”

“Mmm.”

He wipes more gently - gently, gently all over my face - and his expression slowly softens and soon he looks - if that’s possible - even more pleased than before. I guess he sees past all the swelling, the cuts and bruises.

I know I’m handsome. I was called a beautiful child then a beautiful boy and now a handsome man. But I forget. It was helpful with the girls but lately it’s been more of a nuisance. Liam doesn’t much like me sleeping around and he’s - not jealous, exactly, but he doesn’t like men looking at me.

“You must turn a lot of heads, Master Cormac.”

Aye, but Haytham Kenway looks at me like he’s never seen anything like me before and I can feel that this man has been everywhere and seen everything.

He must turn a lot of heads too. He could have ‘alpha’ tattooed on his forehead and it couldn’t be more obvious - except to blind dolts like me. Liam’s all alpha too but in a different way. He’s over 6’2’’, with shoulders almost as broad, practically made of muscle, with a jaw like a brick and eyes the colour of the sky at noon on a clear sunny day. Nothing subtle about Liam. He’s had women fawning over him since he was fifteen. Master Kenway is something else. Light grey eyes and hair that would be chestnut only it’s just a little ashy, like it won’t even risk being obvious, the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen but nothing else too striking in his features, just enough of everything so there’s not too much or too little of anything anywhere. He’s strong too, stronger than I’d expected from looking at him. Hard body, hard thighs, strong arms. It would really take a dunce like me to miss his being an alpha. He must have women _and_ men ready to do his bidding.

A slight shiver goes through me at the memory of his crisp tone and that stern look of his. Must be why he’s so gentle and quiet. He’s used to being listened to and obeyed. He’s probably never had to raise his voice in his life.

He’s found a tear in my shirt and worries it gently with the tip of his finger and whenever it brushes against the tiny bit of skin beneath it sends a glitter of sunshine up my spine.

I can’t stop staring at him, waiting, and eventually he leans in and brushes his mouth over mine, then nudges my nose gently before another kiss, just barely harder and just a moment, then he covers my mouth with his, gentle, so gentle, and I can’t seem to move.

Kenway draws away just enough to look into my eyes, his voice low as he trails his lips over my skin, light and soothing, from the corner of my mouth to my eye to my temple, pouring life and quicksilver straight into my veins and rushing through to every part of my body, raising goosebumps all over my skin and when I close my eyes his lips are _there_ , everywhere at once. And then his breath in my ear.

“Is this something else your Havana girls taught you to like, Shay?”

I nod and bite his jawline gently, my teeth scraping along his skin. He smiles then tilts my head up and kisses me harder. I can’t believe it - he looks so cool and distant, but it’s like he’s made of fire.

Pulling away, he bites my bottom lip sharply.

“Do you do this with O’Brien too?”

No, Liam doesn’t like this sort of thing, thinks it wanton, just the occasional quick kiss when we’re alone., and even then mostly out of obligation Nothing like this. I missed it so much.

He nudges my face before biting my mouth gently.

“No matter. I think we’re going to enjoy our time together, Shay.”

He still looks at me so closely, with such intense admiration - I can’t get used to it. He pulls at my clothes a little impatiently but is all gentleness and patience as he slips a warm hand under my shirt and runs it over my skin. His smile widens slightly and he presses a kiss onto my forehead.

“I mean you no harm, hawkling. You’ll let me have you without a fight, won’t you, Shay?”

_Hawkling?_

I won’t fight him. After the months I’ve had, I’d pay a much higher price for some food and a few hours in a warm place. And Master Kenway is so gentle… and he knows what he’s doing. Looking up into his eyes I realise that if he tried to bed me now I wouldn’t stop him.

I nod and bite his chin slowly.

Laughing softly, he nuzzles my temple again.

“Not now, Shay. You’ll feel better after a long bath and a hot meal.”

He spoils me with kisses and caresses until I’m half-blind with it. He holds me easily and comfortably, he must be used to this. I’m half asleep, worn out and cold. Still cold, so cold. I’ve been cold for weeks and now even the fire in the enormous fireplace can’t warm me. The only parts of me that feel warm are the ones Haytham Kenway’s touching and that hot pool at my core, as though it were the only part of me still alive. He shifts lower onto the sofa, crossing his ankles over a corner of the coffee table, drawing me up against his chest, his hold firm and steady. The slow thud of his heartbeat and his fingers trailing up and down my arm are putting me half to sleep.

This place should feel familiar to me and I can’t forget that it isn’t, that it’s like nowhere I’ve ever been, that this room is neither on my _Morrigan_ nor at the Homestead, that it isn’t any place I should be. I can’t forget this man who is so rich and polished and powerful, the master of this place that doesn’t even seem real and who isn’t Achilles and who isn’t Liam. In this place and with this man, I can’t help feeling weak, worn and _defenceless_. And I can’t help feeling s _afe_. Safe and warm and comfortable, like an oyster in its shell. And outside the snow keeps falling.

“There, rest a moment. You’ve taken quite a tumble out of your nest, hawkling, but we’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”


	3. Haytham | Laid Bare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bathtime for Shay. Because he's really dirty and smelly and cold. 
> 
> Haytham's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lane Barrington (OMC) is Haytham's butler.

HAYTHAM

 

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

“I trust the governor’s dinner was a success, sir?”

Barrington’s creaking voice always manages to sound both deadpan and ironic. He came in with my valet carrying a letter tray and lingers at my desk now that my valet has led Shay away to be tidied up before his bath.

“Oh yes, but I’m glad I won’t have to get dressed up to go and talk about war for a few days. I’m looking forward to some quiet to get some real work done - warm fires, and dinner at my own table.”

“I’m happy to hear it, sir. Is there any other particular cause for… celebration?”

He means Shay.

“Shay Cormac was stopped, along with a handful of his colleagues, by a patrol unit. Apparently they were brawling. Word came through during after-dinner drinks that some of the sort of ‘undesirable element’ I take an interest in had been caught.”

“I see.”

“Liam O’Brien was among them.”

The barest flinch of surprise on the usually immobile face and when Barrington speaks again his croak of a voice is even more preternaturally deep and hoarse than usual. 

“Is he…?”

“Oh yes, quite safely locked up in a basement cell under continuous armed guard. One of the Redcoats recognised him from one of our circulars, which is why they were taken in and held rather than just given a token warning for disturbing the peace.”

A pause before Barrington speaks again.

“May I offer my congratulations, sir? This has been a good day.”

Oh yes. This has been a very good day.

This dinner is the last in a long series of talks I’ve had with all the men of influence I could think of and get introductions to. Ever since I returned to the colonies a couple of weeks ago I’ve been making the rounds of taverns, tea rooms, and fashionable salons, to share with my contacts the information I gathered while in Europe - a week in Boston when I arrived before moving on to New York, which will now be my home, or at least my permanent base, for the foreseeable future. The more time I spend with Sir Charles Hardy, the new governor and captain of the Royal Navy, the more certain I am that he and I are of a like mind - an invaluable ally.

The news of Liam’s capture came on top of a few hours of the very best food and wine that the colonies of four continents can provide and an unparalleled opportunity to cement old relationships and make valuable new ones.

Barrington still looks pale so I motion him to sit down.

“Here, have a drink with me.”

I prepare two glasses with a finger of whisky each on a nearby side table then bring them over to the desk and for a moment we drink in silence.

What has made me exultant has left Barrington shaken.

O’Brien has been at my throat ever since I set foot on this continent. Even more than Achilles Davenport himself, O’Brien has been a thorn in my side because where Achilles is the head and therefore merely the thought, O’Brien is the arm and consequently the action. His limitless energies have been thrown into recruiting and training members for the Asssassins, planning every possible disruption to my plans and plotting my demise - at his own hands or those of others.

Oh yes, Liam O’Brien’s existence has been a sword of Damocles over my head for years. Barrington takes another sip, his granite features uncreasing into the very faintest of smiles, and I remember that this danger has weighed on his mind too.

“All the same, sir, you could have ordered more of the usual.”

“Yes, but Shay is irresistible. Those eyes! And have you ever seen such cheekbones?”

Barrington just swallows down a sigh of resignation.

“I had a guest room made up for Master Cormac.”

“Mmm, thank you, Barrington. He needs feeding as well as a thorough wash and see if we can rustle up some clothes for tomorrow. One of my plainer nightshirts, perhaps, I’m not sure he’s as comfortable with lace as I am.”

“Very well, sir.”

A pregnant pause.

“I assume you and Master Cormac have come to an agreement, sir…”

“We have. He was in no state to refuse.”

“He does seem to be in terrible condition but…”

“Yes, Barrington.”

“All the same, sir, is this wise?”

“No, I suppose not but he won’t hurt me. And Lane, he’s behaved very well until now, I don’t want him embarrassed or made to feel unwelcome.”

I’ve held my own against Achilles’ assassins and besides I’m not at all inclined to give up Shay now he’s proving to be such a charming and willing companion.

“Understood, sir. I gave orders for a simple meal and place setting.”

“Perfect.”

Barrington sets about tidying a corner of my desk while I pick out Shay’s file from the stack they gave me along with his possessions.

“Here we are. Shay Cormac. Barely twenty-five years old, born here in New York to Irish parents. Mother dead in childbirth; father a captain in the merchant marine, died in a storm when the boy would have been just fifteen. Followed a couple of years of petty theft and drunken brawls then nothing until today - his time with Achilles, no doubt.”

Barrington makes a noncommittal sound and wanders over to one of the potted palms to quietly fuss over its fronds.

Turning my attention to Cormac’s equipment, I find a pair of indifferent pistols, a serviceable but unremarkable matching sword and dagger set, a strange rifle and its stranger ammunition, a worn pair of gloves, a few bills and some change, an assortment of rope, darts, sticks of animal bone, what look like scraps of maps, and not one but-

“ _Two_ hidden blades.”

Barrington turns sharply, a few small, desiccated fronds in his gloved hands and a furrow between his brows.

“ _Sir_ …”

Yes, this complicates things. Two hidden blades tell me he’s far from being the simple foot soldier I’d taken him for and that if he is not already a master assassin then he’s certainly being trained up as one. Much more. And O’Brien’s parting threat suggests Shay is privy to more secrets than he admits to.

Also more dangerous than I’d originally thought. What I told Barrington holds true, I don’t believe Shay could do me serious injury in his condition, and what’s more I don’t believe he would even if he could. All the same, I think I’ll take some precautions before putting a trained assassin in my bed. Given the state he’s in, I’d been toying with the idea of foregoing my pleasure for tonight - though my first taste of him has barely taken the edge of my want - but a change now might send the wrong message. So far Shay has responded well to authority, more of the same will help keep him in line. After all, sex is an act of dominance, especially by an alpha over an omega.

An omega - one of that rare breed of creatures widely believed to be better suited for pleasure than reproduction since their low fertility means a far lower risk of pregnancy. None of the messy bleeding and hysterics that some men find so trying in women and instead those delicious heats of theirs. Yes, plenty of advantages but such delicate breeders - a narrow window of fertility lasting barely a day for some, the child so easily lost and the very slenderness that makes the most prized so attractive working against them at the time of delivery, endangering both them and the child.

Shay, so tall, so masculine in features and bearing, is easily mistaken for a beta - I certainly mistook him for one at first. Not that it mattered, it wasn’t his nature as an omega that attracted me. Shay’s stark colouring and sharp, brooding, almost predatory, expression are just my taste. But the look on his face when I told him my name, seeing him all battered and wide-eyed, made me realise it was his willing body I wanted to feel beneath mine. I want him to look at me the way he did in the carriage and when I kissed him - his dark eyes wide and bright with wonder. I want to give him something more to marvel at.

Looking over the bracers I find them very old and worn - an older make than mine, no doubt hand-me-downs, perhaps even O’Brien’s own old blades. The leather has become so hard it has started to crack on either side of the metal inset and the insides, especially, are worn to a glassy shine. The mechanisms themselves show signs of salt water corrosion and one of them jams slightly.

“These will need some work, Barrington.”

“Do you intend to use them, sir?”

I smile and toss the bracers back onto the table.

“How long will Master Cormac be staying, sir?”

“I’m not sure yet. Two or three days at least. Barrington, make sure it’s understood his presence is to be an absolute secret - give whatever explanation you like.”

Barrington cracks the stem of another dry frond.

“The staff will likely come to their own conclusions, sir. They should cover the circumstances quite nicely.”

Of course. Once word spreads that Shay is an omega - and my valet seems a likely source - they’ll have an idea what my interest in him is. Not very flattering but also not very far from the truth.

“The bath should be ready, sir.”

“Yes, and I should change.”

Upstairs in my dressing room, I find Shay completely transformed. My valet given his face a more thorough clean and a shave after raking back his hair as best he could. Now Shay’s savage, regular features and that splendid bone structure of his are fully on display. It also heightens the contrast between his dark hair and eyes and pale skin. Even battered he is undeniably and strikingly handsome.

“Much better already.”

Shay waits, still and silent, until we’re alone then raises his gaze to me and in it I can read how _relieved_ he is to see me. Just being alone with my valet was a strain on him but he soon softens into a smile. They say omegas instinctively seek the protection of alphas. I’ve never believed it but perhaps it’s true.

Poor creature. He’ll need some cosseting before he’s back to his usual self - whatever that is.

“Come, let’s get you cleaned up.”

The bathtub has been set up near the fireplace, where a few pails of clean water are being kept warm. I check the temperature of the water then turn to find Shay still standing around, fully dressed.

“Let me have a look at you, Shay, then get in. The water will start going cold.”

I draw up an armchair and settle into it and Shay watches me watch him undress on the old sheet Barrington has had laid out on the floor. He’s long and lean, all made of hard, slender muscles and clean lines -my taste in every way. Quite perfect despite the bruises, cuts and scars, though he has a lot more of them than I’d anticipated, even for a master assassin.

“Turn around, Shay.”

As he turns I admire the sweep of his muscles from his back over the line of his hips down to his flat stomach. That and the muscles of his back, as beautifully defined as those of his torso, the line of his spine coming down to the two hard dimples just above the high curve of his rump.

“Very good. Come over here and let me look at that shoulder.”

I stand as he comes to me and almost immediately frown.

“That’s a recent bullet wound.”

“It’s healing.”

My frown deepens as I touch it gently.

“The bullet is still in it!”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“How old is it?”

“Over a week. I think it’s healing.”

No sign of infection but it hasn’t fully healed yet and I can feel the spent bullet’s jagged shape. No, it must come out, especially since it lies so close to the articulation of the shoulder-blade where it could cause immense pain and harm. Barrington and I could attempt it but since there's no infection he may as well have the benefit of the doctor’s expertise.

“Get in the tub, we’ll have that seen to later.”

As he steps into the tub I admire the smooth play of muscles beneath his pale skin, then stand, gather up his clothes in the sheet and dump them on the floor outside the door. Only his belt and holster are worth keeping.

Pulling off my vest and rolling up my sleeves, I pull a low armchair up to the tub where Shay has started washing his hair.

“Let me.”

After wetting my hands, I sink them into his thick, soapy hair, working it into a thicker lather. After a thorough rinse and working up another lather, the dark strands are untangled and pliable again and as I massage his scalp he slowly relaxes.

“How on earth did you get so dirty, Shay?”

“I spent a few days in hiding, sir.”

“I see.”

Another rinse and his hair hangs smooth, long and glistening, even darker now the dust has been washed out of it. When I press a wet kiss against a pale temple, he shivers and turns his head slightly, leaning into the kiss.

“Lean forward.”

I pick up the washcloth and start scrubbing his back, taking care with his injured shoulder and all the cuts and bruises, the scrubbing draws his blood up to the surface.

“I can wash myself, sir. Your clothes will get wet.”

“That hardly matters. And you must learn not to interfere with my pleasure, Shay, I may not be able to indulge myself like this again.”

“Indulge yourself, sir?”

I drop a sound kiss onto the top of his head and continue scrubbing. After cleaning his neck and shoulders, I kiss and bite the now sensitive flesh gently, then draw him against me until his back is pressed against my chest, soaking my shirt, and murmur into his ear.

“Did you ever do this with your Havana girls?”

“Aye. Once or twice.”

He bites my chin as I start to wash his chest lazily, sometimes pausing to splay my hands over his skin, running them over the bruises I find there, stark against his pale skin.

“Do you know what a parole is, Shay?”

“Aye, it’s one’s word, isn’t it?”

“Yes. If you give me yours that you won’t try to escape I’ll let you have the run of the estate. Do we understand each other?”

“You have my word, sir.”

I brush my lips against his wet hair.

“We’re going to get along, aren’t we, Shay?”

He nods slightly and we fall silent a moment.

“I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”

“No trouble at all, Shay. I’m very pleased with you.”

He shifts, laying his head comfortably against my chest.

“The easy way is very easy. Sir.”

“It’s what I intended, hawkling. _This_ is what I’d hoped for.”

I pause. We’ve fallen so quickly into such a deep complicity that it’s easy to take this trust for granted.

“Shay, you do see, don’t you, that it’s only easy because we trust each other? Even though we ought not.”

“I do.”

He’s quiet a moment.

“You must think I’m very easy.”

“Oh no, I rather flatter myself I’m irresistible.”

He grins up at me, immediately cheered.

A few more kisses and he settles back against my shoulder, his gaze wandering again, taking in his surroundings.

“Is this your house or the Order’s?”

“Mine but naturally as Grand Master I keep parts of it at the Order’s disposal - a meeting place, library, refuge, even food hall. Some of our members are army men and have no fixed home here in the colonies - they keep some of their belongings here, have their mail sent here so I can send it on. And two of our junior members live in one of the cottages on a semi-permanent basis.”

“Don’t they have homes? I thought you Templars were all rich men.”

I laugh softly into his hair.

“No, hawkling. Certainly, many of the influential members are also rich - often influential _because_ they arerich - but not all. Not even all educated. Jack Weeks and Christopher Gist both come from very modest backgrounds and both have used the Order to educate themselves. As Grand Master it is also my duty to oversee, encourage and help them in this. Just as my mentor did me. I expect Achilles does the same. Your physical education seems to have suffered no deficiencies.”

Silent, Shay toys with the washcloth as it floats in the water.

“I’ve never been in a house this beautiful before. It’s even more beautiful than the Rosa del Sur.”

“The Rose of the South. Sounds like a high-class brothel.”

“It is. Not… that your home is like a brothel, sir, I just meant…”

“Mmm. That it has every luxury.”

My chest heaves in silent laughter as I nip one of his ears sharply then mouth it gently.

“Aye… The Homestead is comfortable but it’s nothing like this.”

“They’re hardly comparable. You can’t expect a frontier homestead to be furnished like a New York mansion.”

“It’s not that. It’s… Well, there’s so much of everything here. Heat, water, comfort. So much of it. And with everything just so - the furniture, the drapes, the carpets… Such a feeling of being _inside_ , you could forget that there _is_ an outside, that there’s such a thing as mud or dirt or rain or cold or snow.”

“Everybody should - no, one day everybody _will_ live like this. Perhaps not in such a big house filled with so many furnishings,” I smile as I catch his side glance, “but every house with its own source of clean water, enough fire to keep warm and walls that are an effective protection against the elements, against the outside. Oh, I know how other people live,” I answer his look of surprise, “They traipse through the mud and dirt and cold to get water that’s not fit for washing clothes in and drag it back home to be used for drinking, cooking, cleaning themselves. Back to homes that are never quite warm and never quite clean because the walls are made of planks that are too thin and don’t quite fit together, that let out the warmth and let in the cold and dirt.”

I fetch one of the pails of water near the fire and empty it into the tub, watching Shay sink into the water, soaking up its heat.

“How?”

“Well, I had the property surveyed before making an offer on it. We found a hot spring in the grounds and that _someone_ had started to make changes to the house while it stood empty. You might know more about the particulars than I but in any case the result was that the main building had to be almost entirely redone. I had the house gutted and its insides rebuilt. Pipes bring the water from the well straight into the house - to the kitchens, the laundry, the ground floor and even to this floor. No more hauling buckets of water out of the well and carrying them inside. I kept the fireplaces but most of the heat you feel comes from the fires in the kitchens. Pipes are set along the flues, they run inside the walls, carrying the heat throughout the house.”

Shay stares, wide-eyed.

“Like blood? In the body.”

“Yes. Yes, exactly like that.”

Clever. Very clever. Everything about him - his background, his manner, his speech - tells me he’s not had much formal education but he’s experienced, well-travelled and has a quick intelligence. He’s nothing like Charles, William or John - an altogether different breed.

“And you think someday everybody will have that?”

“That’s what we’re working towards. By pioneering the system and doing research into making it cheaper and easier to install. Obviously it can’t be used in single thickness wooden walls and we need to test the effect of the pipes, find a way to make them cheaper. We couldn’t have prepared your bath on such short notice without all these things.”

He sinks his hands into the water, cupping them together to hold some of the warm, soapy water, watching it trickle between his fingers.

“I’d never had a hot bath before. In a bathtub, I mean. And never this hot.”

“It’s a good thing I have a bathtub. I’m not sure how we could have cleaned you up otherwise. It’s a little too cold to throw you in a horse trough.”

“I’m usually clean. Perhaps not as clean as you but…”

“I’m afraid you’re going to be kept as unnecessarily clean as I am while you’re here.”

“How long will you keep me?”

“I’m not sure. I’d only intended to keep you for a night or two but… Are you so eager to get back to Achilles?”

Shay is silent, sitting low in the water while I repeatedly soak the washcloth then wring it out over his shoulders.

“What are you going to do with the others?”

“I haven’t decided yet, and I would stress, Shay, that it has nothing to do with you so you mustn’t feel that your behaviour will impact anybody’s future but your own. We’ve managed to keep your capture secret, that will give my people a few days to decide if they can be pressed onto ships, the others will be handed over to ordinary justice and whatever punishment is meted out there. Your friend O’Brien I will hold onto a while longer.”

“He won’t talk.”

“Oh, I think he might be persuaded.”

Shay’s expression closes instantly and he looks away. He’s silent a moment.

“And me?”

“You’re a separate matter. We have our own agreement.”

“But you wouldn’t…?”

“No. First of all, it would be villainous, given I singled you out for my own selfish pleasure and forced you into an agreement. And secondly, you are not - forgive me - important enough. I don’t even want to have Liam O’Brien killed. He’s obviously a loyal, resourceful man who could do a lot of good if he bent his mind to it. But he’s a Master Assassin and Achilles’ right hand. They have sworn to kill me and mine. It would be irresponsible and suicidal for me to release him without guarantees. Speaking of which, Shay, you’ve not sworn to kill me too, have you?”

“Me? No.”

“But you have a general duty to act in the Brotherhood’s interest?”

“I suppose. But I’ve never been asked to judge what is in the Brotherhood’s interest.”

There is more than a hint of coldness in that.

“You don’t think that interest always includes killing Templars? Particularly Grand Masters?”

“Achilles and Liam would think so.”

“Don’t you, Shay?”

“I don’t know. Killing people feels so empty and wasteful.”

His voice has dropped, low and husky and barely above a whisper. One killer baring his soul to another.

“How many people have you killed, Shay?”

“Three. No, hundreds. Maybe thousands. I don’t know.”

I notice he’s gripped the sides of the bathtub tightly. If I had any sense that he was trying to manipulate me I’d have him taken back to the barracks in an instant, but I was taught to judge character and Shay is emotionally naked. He kept himself together through his capture, O’Brien’s threats and mine but now I’ve touched a nerve so raw his composure has vanished in an instant.

“Careful you don’t reopen that wound, Shay.”

Another silence.

I’m still running my hands over his chest lazily, delighting in the feel of him. The hot water has cooled to a more pleasant heat and the colour that it and my scrubbing had brought to his skin is fading away.

The tension in his body slowly eases.

Shay is quiet, his head tucked under my chin again. He rests so comfortably against me, his whole body relaxed, no sign of fear or apprehension or embarrassment. He wholly understands the nature of my attraction for him and is willing to give me what I desire. He also seems to have understood my broader desire for a couple of days of easy companionship, behaving with what appears to be natural warmth and lack of constraint.

“You’re very experienced, aren’t you? Sir.”

“Perhaps not as much as your Havana girls but yes.”

Another silence as I idly and repeatedly dunk the washcloth in the water then wring it out over his chest, watching the water run in rivulets down the shallow grooves between his muscles.

I shift forward slightly and bend to kiss his hair, nudging gently so that he leans his head back slightly and I can press my lips against his forehead, continuing slowly, trailing deliberate kisses over his brow, the bridge of his nose then its tip, until he lets his head fall back entirely against the edge of the tub, revealing the long line of his throat.

As I give him a series of short, deep kisses, I move my hand up, running the ball of my thumb along his throat before splaying my hand over it, spanning it easily, pressing slightly. Not a flinch as he looks up at me. I move my thumb up to his chin, pressing down so he opens his mouth and I can kiss him again, deep and lingering, before finishing with a bite.

When I move away, I settle his head against my shoulder, nuzzling his damp hair again, close to his ear.

“You like that I’m experienced, don’t you, Shay?”

He nods and his thick straight lashes are stark against his pale skin when he lowers them. I smooth his hair back to press my lips against his temple.

“Do you do this often, sir?”

“I expect you’ve been an Assassin long enough to know that I do not, Shay. Nor do I generally bring strangers into my house for _this_ , if that is your broader question. But when I saw you… well… the mood struck.”

“What if I had refused?”

“I’m not sure. I took you from the barracks because leaving an omega in the hands of soldiers is inhuman and I wouldn’t have sent you back no matter what you decided. I’d intended the ‘hard way’ to be an empty threat - no bath, a cold dinner, and a night in a shed.”

I move to nuzzle his temple.

“I’m glad you chose the easy way. This is what I wanted, just ease and pleasure and to do you a good turn at the end of it. Besides, when the outcome is certain, only a fool would chose the hard way over the easy way.”

Shay’s silent a moment.

“Liam would have chosen the hard way.”

“No doubt he would have. So would Achilles. Though what good it would have done either I really couldn’t say.”

Shay is quiet and I lay a hand on his head.

“I will, of course, let Liam believe whatever you want me to. What there is between us is nobody’s business but our own, Shay.”

“Do you mean that?”

Ah, that soft, husky voice, so gentle and trusting.

“Yes.”

I give his hands a thorough clean. Hard hands, calloused, the nails dirty and ragged. Long fingered, sinewy, nimble and strong, fingertips reddened by the onset of chilblains.

“Aren’t you going to ask me for any secrets?”

“Mmm. I should, shouldn’t I? You said you’re not privy to anything important but Master O’Brien’s threat to you rather ruined that play.”

Shay is quiet but a delicate shiver shakes him when I mouth the inside of his wrist.

“It was very stupid of him to make that threat - uncharacteristically stupid. All he needed to do was say you were married.”

“But we’re not.”

“No, but it wouldn’t have been worth the time and effort to check. Letting me take you and then threatening you… that was criminally careless.”

“You think I know something?”

“I’m sure of it. And if the threat is a direct one against me or mine, I would beg you to tell me, Shay, but I won’t press you for any other information. So, is it?”

“No.”

I feel Shay’s teeth scrape over my chin again. I feel his body tense as my hand and the washcloth go lower, between his thighs. I nip the shell of his ear as I feel him arch against me.

“I think I’ll join you in the tub tomorrow. Now, lean forward, Shay. Up.”

As he does so, I reflect that because the basis of our arrangement was so clear there’s no shyness or awkwardness between us. Shay knows what I want from him.

As I part his cheeks to clean him I’m struck by how beautiful he is even there, delicate and fresh, but also by the unmistakable signs that he’s been brutally and repeatedly abused, his entrance surrounded by a starburst of thin, white scar lines. I wipe him down gently then stand and fetch one of the pails by the fire.

“Stand up and I’ll rinse you off.”

He stands in what is now decidedly cloudy water and I carefully upend a couple of buckets of water over him and help towel him dry.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 points on world building:   
> \- 1st person POV means the information provided is necessarily restricted to what the characters know.   
> \- The understanding of human reproduction at the time was very limited - discussions of it within the fic reflect this.
> 
> Certain things, therefore, will never be explained within the context of the fic and for the sake of clarity, I'll put any explanations I think necessary in the footnotes. 
> 
> If you have any questions, please ask in comments. This probably makes a lot more sense in my head than it does on paper.
> 
> \----------------
> 
> Haytham mentions that omegas don't bleed - this is because they go through an estrous/oestrous cycle in which the endometrium is completely reabsorbed.


	4. Shay | Flipside of the Coin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Shay has his dinner, Haytham indulges him by answering questions about the war, the Order and Precursor artefacts, unconsciously strengthening his belief that he shouldn't have taken all the things Achilles and Liam told him at face value.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple more chapters of politics, world-building and teasing. Sorry, sorry, sorry...
> 
> Shay's POV

**SHAY**

 

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

I must be the luckiest person alive.

This morning I didn’t think I’d live out the day, now I’m being fussed over and coddled like one of those little pups rich ladies have.

Master Kenway is so good to me. I don’t understand the first thing about how he’s behavin’. He thinks I’m his enemy but he treats me better than a friend would, like… aye, only Liam ever treated me like this - back when we were little and he loved me in every way possible. I keep findin’ myself lookin’ into Kenway’s eyes, tryin’ to guess what he’s thinkin’ but all I see is sage and moss and lichen on rock.

After he’s rubbed me down with a towel, doused me in some kind of sharp-smellin’ ointment and wrapped me up in bandages - not very well, even using both hands he’s not very good at it - he helps me into a thick robe then we go back into the main room where dinner’s been set up on the low table facing the fire. _My_ dinner.

Both the butler and the footman glance at me. They must be wonderin’ that their master is thinkin’ - plucking a dirty, bloodied thing like me off the streets and bringin’ it into this house, treading mud all over the carpets.

And feeding me. Roast quail on a small mountain of vegetables. Cold cuts, butter, and bread so fresh from the oven it’s still steaming, fruits that must be worth more than their weight in gold in this season, and a bottle of wine sealed with red wax. Maybe dinner is for Master Kenway and not for me at all.

“Does the wine meet with your approval, Shay?”

“I don’t really drink wine, sir.”

“An ale, then?”

“No, thank you. Water’s fine.”

“I’m not sure the water here is safe yet, Shay, I’d rather you had ale or tea.”

“Some tea then, thank you, sir.”

“Barrington, tea, whiskey and ice, the papers in my work tray and the latest despatches.”

Kenway wanders off and as he pulls off his shirt I can see a few scars on his muscular back and I’m reminded that he’s stronger than I am - _a lot_ stronger since I’m just a pile of bruises and broken bones - and that he’s not afraid to fight.

As he comes back with a dry shirt, the butler and footman return with the drinks and the papers, which the butler sets down on the small secretary near the window.

“Will you need me to serve, sir?”

“No, thank you, Barrington. Just have someone clear dinner away in an hour or so. Oh, and a fresh tea tray when they do. A masala chai tonight, I think.”

As Master Kenway moves to pull on his shirt I notice the amulet hung about his neck.

_Is that…?_

“Is it familiar to you, Shay?”

He’s watching me very closely. I don’t have the will to lie to him and besides he obviously sees the truth.

But I don’t want to answer either. No reason to tell him more than he already knows, I’ve betrayed Liam enough as it is. And there’s no telling me what he’ll do to me if he thinks I know something about the Precursor sites and artefacts - it’ll be worse than being taken back to the Homestead.

Master Kenway pulls the amulet from around his neck and holds it out to me.

“It’s quite safe, hawkling, it’s not a Piece of Eden.”

I turn it over in my hand.

He’s right, it’s not a piece of Eden, but it’s definitely a Precursor artefact - the same material, the same markings, only much smaller, less… _significant_ and of course it’s dead, not pulsing with light and energy.

“What is it?”

“A key. But sit down, Shay, I can answer your questions while you eat.”

I hand the amulet back to him and he sets it down on a side table while I sit down to eat. He’s watching me, smiling, and I feel a little self-conscious as I pick up the silver to start eating. It’s heavier than I’m used to.

Master Kenway settles into the armchair on my left and starts sorting through his messages, discarding some, making annotations on others, tossing them into small piles onto the side table.

“That amulet is a key, or so I’m told - the key to a fabulous storeroom filled with the knowledge and secrets of the ancients. I was originally sent here to the Colonies for the purpose of finding this storeroom.”

“Did you?”

“I thought I had, just a few months after arriving, but I was wrong.”

“But that was years ago.”

“It was.”

“But…”

“I keep the amulet as a memento rather than for any practical reason. It reminds me of my mentor. Precursor culture was always more his passion than mine, and at the moment I have other priorities.”

“Your mentor?”

His eyes crinkle as he smiles and leans over to put a bread roll on my plate.

“Yes, or did you think Grand Masters were simply created fully-formed and fully-trained out of dusty old books and dandelion seeds?”

I guess I did - or something like that. I’d never imagined any Templar being young. Never pictured Achilles as young either.

“What are the Pieces of Eden?”

“We don’t exactly know. They’re relics of a very advanced and intelligent lost civilisation and we believe they hold their knowledge and powers, but all of this is very circumstantial and I’m not at all sure they really are what we believe them to be. I… have seen something of their power… when I thought I’d found the storeroom. I was in a cave and for just a moment it all came alive, the very air vibrating with energy. It died away almost instantly. The most vivid impression I had of it was that it was a power so great we might not be able to harness it.”

_Aye. He’s dead right about that._

There’s more food on the table than I’ve had since leaving the homestead and it’s all delicious, fresh and _hot_. I could spend the rest of my life eatin’ fresh-baked bread rolls drippin’ with melted butter.

Master Kenway hands me a note and I find it’s from the Redcoats at the barracks who say all is well and that they’ve isolated Liam as recommended.

_He’s okay._

After the bread and butter, I start on the quail but I’ve never eaten one with a knife and fork and it keeps threatenin’ to rock off the plate. When he notices, Master Kenway comes to stand behind me, leans over and around to guide my hands, carving up half the bird for me, nuzzling my hair before sitting back down. He watches and nods as I carve up the other half just as he showed me, and I feel a warm lick of pride.

Stupidly, I can’t help feeling happy now that I’m clean, warm, dry, eating and drinking to my heart’s content and I’m almost embarrassed at it when Master Kenway puts his papers down and sits back to watch me.

“Eat up, Shay, you need the energy.”

He refills my cup, looking so _pleased_ \- just watching me eat.

“Shay, do you have the second sight - what the Assassins call Eagle Vision?”

Didn’t think he knew about that but I suppose he’s not Grand Master for nothing.

“Aye, sir.”

Not sure why he even bothers askin’ me since he always seems to know the answer to everything.

“A precious gift, even among Assassins. I hadn’t thought you were a master assassin when I first saw you.”

“I’m not.”

“And yet you have _two_ hidden blades…”

Does he think I’m lying? And does Achilles know that Haytham Kenway knows so much about the Brotherhood?

Eagle vision _and_ two hidden blades - no wonder Kenway takes me for one of Achiles’ top-tier assassins. I do have Eagle vision, aye, and keener than most - keener than Liam’s and Hope’s - and most people think it’s wasted on me because I’m such a poor Assassin, lazy and rebellious. And if I hadn’t had the sight not even Liam could have convinced Achilles to let me have a second blade. I pestered him for months about that second blade - for the first blade, for pistols, a sword, for admittance into the Brotherhood, for training, and for more and more responsibility. Liam’s always been so patient and generous with me. I worked so hard to earn his and Achilles’ trust - I nearly died trying. Now I know I will die having failed.

I realise Kenway’s watching me closely. I’ve never been very good at hiding my feelings and from his expression I’m sure he’s read every last one on my face and I feel _naked_.More naked and vulnerable by far than I felt in the bath.

“I’m… not a very good Assassin.”

“Well, I’m hardly likely to hold that against you, am I?”

I push some vegetables around my plate.

But what about Lawrence Washington and the others? What will he do if he finds out I was the one who killed them? And what about Liam? He must know that Liam’s killed scores of his men.

“What will you do with Liam, sir?”

Master Kenway gives me a long look, lids half lowered.

“At any other time I would have had him killed. Fortunately for him, I may be able to trade him for the thing I most want from Achilles at the moment - a truce.”

“ _That’s_ what you most want?”

“Well, what I would _really_ like is a permanent peace, cooperation even, but since that’s likely out of the question I would settle for a truce, yes. We’re at war, I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with Assassin plots and interference.”

“War? These are just… border skirmishes, aren’t they? The British will take a little land, the French will eventually let them have it, and it will all die away, won’t it?”

He smiles faintly.

“Perhaps it was just border skirmishes once. But not since Jumonville Glen and certainly not since the _Alcide_. The French made it very clear that any action against their ships would be taken as an act of war. War may not have been formally declared yet but both countries have already sent troops. Braddock was offered a settlement and he refused it, I’ve just returned from Europe and everything I saw there and everything my contacts tell me confirms that no agreement will be reached there either. War is inevitable, the question is not _if_ but _when_.”

“You fight for the Crown and Achilles fights for the French. He will never agree to a truce.”

“I mean a truce between the Order and the Brotherhood. No personal attacks against me or mine, none against this house or our private interests. I would like to walk past a hay cart without wondering what might spring from it or venture into an alley without fearing that death will come from above - at least for the duration of the war. Once there is peace, he may take up this petty harassment again if he must. And if he feels that Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, are all better off in the hands of the French then he must do what his conscience tells him and help them to make it so. I do not and so will do what I must to see it does not happen - though I would point out, Shay, that I do not fight for the Crown.”

“You’re a Templar.”

“Certainly, I am. But do you think French Templars fight for King George? And the Spanish Templars? The Prussians?”

_Ah._

“Is that what Achilles tells you?”

“Well, no, not exactly. He and Liam say you want power and control. I always thought Templars want money, slaves,” I glance at my hands, “forks and knives made of silver. I suppose… I assumed the easiest way to get them is to work for the Crown.”

“Well, I won’t deny some Templars want those things, but they’re not the Order’s aims. Our goals are Order, Justice, Direction. For everyone. And to achieve those things we do work with the Crown - _with_ it, not _for_ it. Where else can these things come from if not from the top?”

“But you’ll side with the Crown in this war?”

He refills my cup and nods at my plate.

“Yes. Mind you, I did everything in my power to avoid this war altogether, even though I think it likely the British will do well by it. War is always destructive and detrimental to the people who must suffer through it but this continent is _entirely_ unprepared for war. It is not armed for it, its people are not trained for it, and there is very little unity of purpose - this will ostensibly be a fight for King and country but in reality many will be fighting either to protect their lands or expand them.”

“Unity of purpose… Is that what Benjamin Franklin meant?”

“You’ve heard of his Plan?”

“I heard him speak in Albany. I’m not sure I understood it.”

I eat and listen as he explains the Albany plan, the need for the colonies to band together to better defend their interests when dealing with the Crown, to draw from their common needs and goals to find Direction, to encourage trade between the colonies rather than each of them trading directly with England. How this entire mess could have been avoided if there had been hard borders between the French and British territories rather than soft ones, that if there had been any kind of _Order_ , this could have been resolved with transactions - the sale of land or trades. And that really, with all the shifting alliances with the Holy Roman Empire and the Prussians and with growing tensions on the Indian subcontinent, the _last_ thing both the British and French need at this point is to come to blows on the other side of the Atlantic.

“The British started it when they ambushed and murdered Jumonville.”

“British _colonists_ started it. Although even I’m not sure what really happened. George Washington does not admit to doing those things.”

He hands me an orange - an orange, in the dead of winter - then selects a juicy looking pear and starts peeling and cutting it with a knife _and fork_.

“It was in the letter, the one he signed.”

“That only means he’s foolish enough to sign something he doesn’t understand - Washington doesn’t speak or read a word of French. No doubt this adventure has taught him to be more careful. He’s a promising young man but he can be over-eager.”

“He would make a good Templar, wouldn’t he?”

“Possibly.”

“Shouldn’t you recruit him?”

“We were asked not to by his elder brother, who was an important member of our Order.”

_Well, he’s not lying about that._

“Why would he ask that? Did he regret being part of the Order?”

“I would be surprised. Lawrence Washington did very well off the Order, with fairly middling returns. But being a Templar does come with certain restraints and responsibilities. My understanding is that Lawrence wanted his brother to remain free to follow his own destiny. We might work with him, but he will not become one of us unless he himself asks to.”

“Should you be telling me this, sir?”

“What harm can it do? At the very worst, it will save your lot killing him because you mistake him for one of us.”

He leans over to put the plate with the cut up pear on it in front of me.

“Don’t answer if you don’t want to, Shay, but I’m curious as to why O’Brien and you aren’t married yet. Who is holding it off? You or him?”

“Achilles… hasn’t given his approval yet.”

“Do you need it?”

“I suppose not but it’s important to Liam.”

“More important than you.”

I’m surprised by this statement - that’s what it is, a statement, not a question.

“What could he have done?”

“He could have married you without Achilles’ approval - I hardly think Achilles would have disowned or even disrated him for so little - or he could have taken you during your heat - once you were carrying his child it would have been easy to force Achilles’ hand - an alpha’s right to his offspring is as sacred as the right to property. In bending to Achilles’ wishes O’Brien left you unprotected.”

“Is that what you meant earlier? That he should have said we were married?”

“Yes. Assassin or not, Grand Master or not, I would have been liable for criminal conversation in taking you.Married, you would have belonged to O’Brien as completely as his shirt or his boots - though, in fairness, the law considers a mate a great deal more valuable than a pair of boots - and if I had taken you as far as the door of your cell I would have been _stealing_. It wouldn’t have been worth my time checking if it was actually true. But as things stand, the law and I consider you fair game. True, among men of honour your status as O’Brien’s intended would afford some protection and, if he and I had been at least indifferent acquaintances rather than bitter enemies, it might have been enough to make me desist. But for all practical purposes, I doubt his protection extends further than the borders of the Homestead.”

_Not even that far._

I realise this is also why they let Master Kenway take me. I don’t matter at all. On top of his friendships as Grand Master with politicians and the military, he’s also a rich British aristocrat while I’m just a poor Irish colonist as well as an omega on top of being a criminal. 

He’s watching me closely again, I can practically _see_ him reading my mind.

“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? I mean… here with you… Because I’m an omega?”

“No, Shay. You’re here because you’re Assassin who was caught and because you’re to my taste. If I’d been in a different mood I might have taken your friend O’Brien. It makes no difference, the principle is the same.”

“Liam? But he’s an alpha…”

“Oh, alphas can be used just like omegas, like all men. Oh yes, I’ve had many dealings with your Liam O’Brien in the past and he’s just about worn out my last shred of patience. If I’d chosen him there would have been no question of pleasure between us. Certainly not for him.”

I stare at him. I don’t understand and I’m half afraid of understanding. For the first time, I see something dark and _dangerous_ in him.

He answers my silent question slowly.

“I could have taken him in blood, the same way he’s sometimes had you. Perhaps I should, it might teach him to be more careful of others.”

I taste bile again. How does he know? Could he really do that to Liam? Would he?

“Shay, did it occur to you that O’Brien would not have been any protection while you were in custody? That there was nothing to stop anyone else from doing what I did?”

My whole body tightens. He’s right, at the time I’d only thought of what _Liam_ might do to me while we were prisoners.

“They eventually would have realised you’re an omega, even though you look and act like a beta. In fact, you could probably even pass for an alpha if you put your mind to it - some betas do.”

“Me? An alpha?”

“Why not? You’re tall, strong and masculine. If people can believe Achilles Davenport is an alpha, why wouldn’t they believe you are one too? Of course, there’s a physical truth at the bottom of it all but have you ever seen anyone ask Liam to prove his alphahood? I don’t have ‘alpha’ tattooed on my forehead. ”

“But then… How did you know I’m not an alpha?”

“Because _you_ know you aren’t one. So you don’t behave like one.”

“Is that how you knew I’m an omega? You barely looked at me.”

“Ah, no. Your friend Liam gave that away. He was right up against the bars between you, I think he even had an arm in your cell. He was trying to protect you.”

“You took quite a gamble accepting my offer.”

“I’m okay with it.”

Master Kenway lifts his nearly empty glass and shakes it.

He’s right, this could have gone really, really wrong for me. But even if this is the end - and it doesn’t feel like it - I’d rather die warm, with a full belly, smothered in kisses, than beaten in a cold cell or broken at the foot of a cliff. And who knows? A couple more days of food and warmth and I might be strong enough to manage a disappearance of some kind when Master Kenway lets me go. Some of the captains around these parts owe me favours, I could ask one of them to take me someplace Shay Cormac has never been and where nobody knows his face.

I realise I’ve been sitting in front of an empty plate for ages so I put my cutlery down and Master Kenway smiles.

“Out of questions already?”

I can’t help an embarrassed laugh.

“Just thought I’d do the charitable thing and let you catch your breath.”

His smile widens at that and his voice is low and quiet when he speaks.

“Come here, Shay.”

Almost as soon as I stand he tugs me onto his lap so that I straddle it then reaches up to cup my face in his hand, brushing his thumb over my cheek up into my hair. The way he looks at me makes me shiver and I’m suddenly nervous again but when he pulls my head down for a slow, lazy kiss and I realise I’ve been waiting for this.

“That taste…”

I deepen the kiss, chasing a taste on his tongue.

“It’s the single malt. Here, try it.”

He takes another sip of his whisky then kisses me again, letting me suck it off his tongue.

“Do you like it?”

I nod and he drains his glass and lets me kiss him again, drawing me close so our hips fit together snugly. I’m naked under the towelling robe and the fabric of his breeches rubs against me. He’s not hard but I can feel his heat between my thighs. His hands slide down to my backside, still with that smile on his face and when I go back to kissing him he grabs me, squeezing slowly - this is madness, it’s like I can do no wrong with this man.

When I pull away he brushes my hair back from my face.

“Shay… Has O’Brien ever taken you during your heat?”

“No.”

“Have you ever enjoyed what he does?”

_Enjoyed it?_

“He’s hurt you, hasn’t he?”

A shiver of remembered pain that I try to cover by answering quietly.

“Sometimes it’s just uncomfortable.”

“I have no desire to hurt you, Shay. None at all. And I won’t do anything to you that I haven’t had done or wouldn’t have done to myself. Do you trust me?”

I nod. I believe he means it.

“I think I’ll work for another hour or so before bed.”

Gods, he’s patient.

“I’m sorry I’m so much trouble.”

He laughs quietly at this and gives me a hard, sound kiss.

“Shall we pull our armchairs up to the fire?”

Smiling at his pleasure, I glance at the inviting stretch of carpet before the fire.

“Could I sit on the floor?”

“As you wish.”


	5. Haytham | Paradigm Shifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Impressed with Shay, Haytham decides to try to recruit him and must therefore find a way to tempt the trained Assassin over to the Templars while keeping him under his thumb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Dub-con 
> 
> Haytham's POV

**HAYTHAM**

 

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

As I finish reading a lengthy letter from Charles Lee, my gaze drops to Shay. We moved my armchair and a side table for my papers, and I gathered up the pillows and throws off the couch and piled them onto the carpet for Shay who made himself a little divan at my feet, settling against my armchair, between my legs, and I feel another surge of satisfaction at seeing him there.

Shay turns his head slightly when I touch his hair, so thick and dark. I finished drying it and brushed it through earlier. Just a couple of firm brushstrokes and it came up impossibly glossy.

“A bearskin would be nice here.”

“You don’t think it would make the room look dark?”

“A white one. A polar bear pelt.”

“Can they be had? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.”

“They’re rare but they can, aye. They’re beautiful. The fur is white but the skin is black.”

“I’ll have my people keep an eye out for one.”

Barrington comes to check on us with a footman carrying a fresh tea tray in tow. The tea tray is set down on the floor near Shay and dinner is tidied away.

Shay looks like a child playing at teatime or picnic, taking his tea in a nest of mohair throw blankets and silk pillows. His delight is palpable as he pours himself a steaming cup of tea from the pumpkin-shaped copper kettle then gingerly takes an impatient sip.

“What do you think of it, Shay?”

“It’s lovely. Just the thing on a cold night. What is it?”

“Masala chai, ‘mixed spice tea’. This is how tea is prepared in India, simmered in a pot with the spices and milk directly in it. Barrington makes it particularly well. The spices will help your cold, so will the ginger.”

“I don’t have a cold, sir.”

I rub my fingers through his hair slowly.

“No, but I’m worried you’ll wake up with one. All told, hawkling, it was rather fortunate I picked you up when I did. A night in a cold, damp cell in the condition you’re in and you’d have woken with pneumonia. As it is, I’m not sure you’ll be entirely spared but I hope we’ll avoid the worst.”

“You’re very kind, sir.”

As I read my papers, I stroke Shay’s hair absently, smiling as he stretches his long legs out on the carpet, his slender feet up to the fire, his entire being radiating happiness as he drinks his tea.

After a while he turns around slightly, resting his head on my knee, closing his eyes in pleasure as I stroke down the side of his face to the shell of his ear.

“Can I help? Nothing important - just…”

“Well… If you don’t mind. We get requests to help build things - hostels, meeting halls, grain silos, that sort of thing. Here is a list of the requests, here are the various notes on the resources we’ve accumulated. Think you could tally everything up and see if there’s enough to do something?”

It is an small, time-consuming task of no confidentiality whatsoever, the perfect thing to take Shay’s mind off the ordeal he anticipates and give me some more measure of his ability.

I hand him an assortment of papers, a book to use as a writing surface, and a pencil that seems to arouse his curiosity. He tries out the pencil and after making a pleased sound of surprise, glances through the papers, then spreads them out all over the carpet before methodically rearranging them in little piles and making careful sums. There’s a confidence in him, the quickness of habit, as though he were used to dealing with numbers and figures.

“Didn’t know the Order had a ship.”

“We don’t, the Order hasn’t found its de la Verendrye yet. We’ll charter a ship in accordance with our needs. Or perhaps the Royal Navy will agree to help, if there isn’t too much to carry and if they have a ship going the right way.”

He stares a moment.

“You would charter a ship just to take building materials all the way to… Île des pins or St Anthony?”

A working knowledge of arithmetic, shipping and sailing, regional geography. He appreciates how much it costs to charter a ship and crew to such faraway places, he can relate it to the value of the cargo.

“We help as we can and this is little enough. Hostels, large barns and windmills can change the lives of whole communities, bring them closer to self-sufficiency, even prosperity. Then they give back, allowing us to help yet more people. You look at this house and see money everywhere - in the carpets and the claw-footed bathtub you sat in, even in the carriage clock near my secretary table - but that money is just resting there. It has lived many lives, it has paid for so many things. That fireplace screen might once have been some homesteader’s first breeding pair of pigs, and the marble mantlepiece was perhaps once the keel of a Royal Navy ship. I didn’t _steal_ that marquetry demilune table - it was made by highly skilled craftsmen, artists, who were properly compensated for doing work they love. Money must _move_. When it does it creates wealth and work.”

Shay stares then finally nods, looks down at the papers before handing them back to me.

“I think that’s enough for today. Shift over a little, Shay.”

I lower myself onto the floor behind him, leaning back against the armchair, drawing Shay up against me. He settles, seeming as easy with me as comfort and a short acquaintance can allow. More than easy.

“Shay… I will keep to my word and let you leave if you wish to, but I should warn you that while you’re here I’ll do all I can to convince you to stay.”

“Stay?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time the Order has taken in a former Assassin. Understand, as Grand Master I have a duty to thin the Brotherhood’s ranks and what better way than to take talent from theirs and add it to ours? If you’re willing to listen, I’ll tell you about the Order, our goals and our work, and I’ll answer any questions you have. I think you’ll find that our aims and those of the Brotherhood are not so different and that you may be able to achieve more with us.”

Shay just stares at me, stunned.

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Shay. I’ve been trained to judge people for ability and potential and you have plenty of both.”

He opens his mouth to protest but the words seem to die on his lips as he continues to look at me, spellbound.

“But what would I do?”

“Oh, almost anything you wanted, Shay. I’ve done what I can to expand the Order but we’re still sadly undermanned. Naturally there would be a trial period before you were formally inducted into the Order but I expect it would be no more than a few months, I intend to keep you close and train you myself. Even so, there would be plenty for you to do that wouldn’t put you in the way of the Brotherhood. We might finally arm a ship and put you in charge of it - you could oversee the delivery of these materials and the construction works yourself. I still need to make trips to Boston and I have a new property in Virginia to oversee, a small fast ship would be just the thing. And once you’re formally inducted… yes, I think I’d like you to accompany me when I go on missions. None of the Order’s members are quite up to my level when it comes to field work. With your training you should be able to keep up.”

“You… do your own field work, sir?”

“Whenever I can and feel it necessary. I prefer to see things with my own eyes.”

“And… us?”

I can’t help smiling at that and press a gentle kiss onto the bridge of his nose before answering.

“I would be happy to service you, if you wish me to, but that, I think, must be a separate issue. Let’s see how tonight goes first, hmm, hawkling?”

Shay nods gently, transfixed, but then the light goes out of his eyes and he lowers his gaze.

“I… I’ve done terrible things.”

“So have we all, Shay, but so long as we still live we must strive for better. Now, you mustn’t fret, I’m not trying to pressure you into anything and you needn’t answer now. I just want you to keep an open mind.”

He nods and though he still lies comfortably in my arms, it’s a long while before he raises his gaze again.

“Do you ever doubt?”

“Often. It is hard but I think it would be worse not to.”

Shay tilts his head up to look at me then presses a soft kiss against my neck. When he speaks again he seems calmer.

“You’re not how I expected.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you, Shay. What were you expecting?”

“Achilles said you were cruel, cold and calculating.”

He says this but I know the reflection was prompted by my not being _physically_ what he expected a Templar Grand Master to be. Achilles and his like to characterise us Templars as a band of privileged old men bent on ruling the world. No wonder he’s surprised at me.

“I can be all those things and more at times but I should be sorry to think I was all of them all the time.”

I draw him close and nuzzle his hair, wonderfully silky and cool now it’s been washed and brushed and dried. Soon I’m kissing him and when he pulls away he’s smiling.

“I can still taste it.”

Ah, the whiskey.

“Are you sure?”

A soft laugh and he kisses me again.

I bury my hands in his smooth hair, pulling it back to mouth his ear then push my tongue into it and I hear his soft gasp and feel him arch against me.

_This_ he could do all day and all night, kissing and foreplay, but he’s been too often and too seriously injured by intercourse to do anything but dread it.

As I brush a few stray strands of hair from his face, he turns his face slightly to press a kiss against my palm.

“I’m going to be so good to you, Shay.”

A little more indulgence in kisses and I’m utterly drunk on him. When I slip my hands into the towelling robe to run them over his back he moves closer, slipping his own arms around my neck, fingers threading into my hair as I ease him onto the floor.

I feel the pressure of his knees at my sides and pull away.

I consider undressing but I like the sight of him laid out like this for my pleasure and I want to indulge in it a moment longer.

I sit up, still tangled up in his long legs, and reach out to slowly push open the towelling robe, letting my fingertips trail over the hard flat pectorals as I do so, then along the elegant collarbones up to the long neck.

He’s perfect. Yes, scarred and bruised and cut, but nonetheless quite perfect.

Opening the robe further I come to Shay’s taut stomach and splay my fingers over it possessively, Shay’s breath hitching just slightly as I slowly move my hand lower, pulling the belt open, revealing his trim hips, lean thighs, and intimate parts.

Shay watches quietly, raising himself slightly so I can help him out of the sleeves, then lays back down, patient and pliant as I run my hand over his body, exploring it minutely, finally stroking the length of a long leg, still casually thrown over me, then back up, hooking my fingers behind his knee to bring it up to my mouth, watching Shay’s lips part in a silent gasp as I lick and kiss the sensitive skin, deliberately mouthing my way up the inside of his thigh. He’s going to protest so I preempt him.

“Quiet, Shay.”

He does what he can to stay quiet, grabbing the robe he’s lying on and biting his fist as I lavish attention on him until he spends himself in my mouth as I did in his.

Shay watches me, breathing through parted lips. I move up and press two fingers onto his tongue a moment before covering his mouth with mine, letting him lick the taste of himself off my tongue. Pulling away, he buries his face against my neck and his whisper ghosts over my skin. 

“I… don’t think anyone’s been as happy with me as you are.”

“I’m glad you know it, Shay.”

Shay shifts, laying his cheek against mine.

“Shay, how many-?”

“You’re the third.”

Just three.

“How long have you and O’Brien been intended.”

“Since I was seventeen.”

That explains it.

Because omegas are reputed such difficult breeders some men insist on a long engagement and wait for conception before committing to marriage. It’s neither nice nor just but it certainly does happen, though I’m surprised at O’Brien since I’d always thought him an honourable man, in his own way.

“Will you help me undress, hawkling?”

I nudge his face gently and he tilts his head up for a kiss, slipping his hands into my shirt. Soon we’re naked on the floor and I finally wrestle him onto his stomach, stretching out on top of him and slipping my arms over his shoulders.

When I bite the back of his neck sharply his body arches up against mine, his firm, delicious rump pressed up against me.

Taking an ice cube from the nearby ice bucket, I slip it into my mouth before kissing the back of Shay’s neck, smiling to myself as he yelps in surprise. I work my way down his spine, feeling the tremors that shake him, the repressed buck of his hips when I reach the small of his back, lingering there in the deep hollow before the high curve of his delicious rump.

Shay lies there quietly, his head resting on his crossed arms, his face largely hidden save for the two dark eyes that watch me, fascinated, as I move lower, kneading the pale cheeks, relishing their firm elasticity before biting one. Shay’s dark eyes widen and I maintain eye contact with him as I part his cheeks to kiss him between them, making him shudder.

He’s so beautiful there. So pale and neat, his smooth, tight pouch and member flushed just a shade darker pink than his entrance. Pink, delicate, fresh, and yes, _virginal_ \- barely a pucker and so sensitive, I can feel the muscle tremble with every light kiss.

I wrap my arms around his hips to hold him still so I can indulge in him, sometimes kissing lightly, sometimes hard, sometimes teasing him with the tip of my tongue, sometimes running my tongue in a rasping lick over him, sometimes covering him with my mouth to suck on him, all the while my fingers on either side of him gently coax him open.

Shay is gasping, writhing in pleasure but trying not to disturb me. He’s enjoying this but when I start to push the tip of my tongue into him he suddenly tenses andbreaks free, turning to look at me in alarm.

“Shay?”

“I’m wet! Why…?”

Settling beside him and pulling him close, I kiss his ear.

“Has it never happened before? Outside your heat, I mean.”

“No. Why…?”

“It’s normal, it’s just your body preparing itself.”

“Preparing itself for… you?”

I can’t help a soft laugh and kiss him when he tilts his head up for reassurance.

“Yes, for me. For being with me. It anticipates pleasure. Being wet will make it a lot easier for both of us.”

I nudge his nose with mine.

“Do you anticipate pleasure with me, hawkling?”

He nods, suddenly shy, still warm and affectionate but uncertain again and I’m reminded that though he’s not inexperienced this is likely new to him.

I kiss him as I reach down between his legs to stroke his entrance before carefully easing the tip of a finger in, causing him to buck sharply.

“Easy, Shay! Has nobody done this to you before?”

“Aye, but not since-.”

“Havana.”

I finish for him and we both laugh.

Pressing my lips against his temple, I press my finger in deeper, to the second knuckle. He feels heavenly - hot, wet and snug.

“There. Relax. Gods, Shay, are you always this tight?”

“S…sorry.”

“Don’t be, it’s glorious, but try to relax. Breathe. There. How many fingers have you had before?”

“Just… just one.”

_Honestly_.

I’d never given any thought to what kind of lover Liam O’Brien might be but the opinion I’m forming now is far from flattering. No wonder Shay is so scarred, both physically and psychologically. But O’Brien is closer to the norm than the exception.

Shay arches back as I push deeper and and when I crook my finger up he writhes so violently I press a hand firmly against his hip to pin him down.

“Easy, Shay! You’ll hurt yourself! If you think you like it a little rough then we can try that another time but I don’t want to hurt you.”

Shay looks adorably contrite but I know better than to brush this off. Yes, Shay may like a little roughness but there’s a fine line between rough play and violence and Shay is clearly used to being hurt, he expects pain. But I don’t want to hurt him if I can help it. It would destroy the trust I’ve worked all evening to build and though I seem to have a reasonable amount of control over him, I can’t foresee how he’ll react if he feels threatened or is hurt, and he _is_ still a trained killer.

“How do you feel about toys, Shay?”

“Toys…? I don’t…”

“Would you be willing to try? Nothing exotic, just something to help prepare you.”

Shay runs his wide-eyed, trusting gaze over my face as though he expects to find some clue to what I intend there, then a small nod.

Disentangling myself, I stand and go to my dressing room to fetch a japanned travel chest and set it down near Shay before retrieving its key from the drawer of my bedside table.

Settling behind him I hand him the key on its long navy ribbon.

“Go on, Shay, open it.”


	6. Shay | Initiation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haytham takes the second instalment of the price Shay agreed to pay for his freedom. Shay, exhausted and conflicted about his feelings for the Templar Grand Master, doesn’t put up much of a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ALL WARNINGS AND TAGS APPLY IN THIS CHAPTER*
> 
> Please read them and exercise discretion.

**SHAY**

 

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

Taking the key, I turn it over in my hands.

I have no idea what Master Kenway means by toys. I’ve heard of them and I think I might have seen some in Havana but I barely remember and I’ve never used any. But Master Kenway hasn’t hurt me yet and I want him to be happy with me.

Besides, I guess I’ll try anything once.

Opening the chest, I feel Master Kenway nuzzle my hair again. It’s all full of boxes and pouches, lacquer, sandalwood, leather, silk, damask, in all different sizes.

Master Kenway picks up the one at the top, a heavy leather pouch, and hands it to me.

As he continues to empty the chest, I unfold the leather envelope and find a cock and knot cast in bronze, the whole thing the length of my hand, and a red ribbon with a tiny brass bell on it.

_Oh._

“That one’s Roman, mostly decorative. The one we’re looking for is in a silver niello box, if memory serves.”

“Roman? How old is it?”

“Oh, no more than a century or two shy of two thousand years, I should think. Not the bell, though, the original was lost long ago.”

_Two thousand years!_

Smooth with patina, green with age in patches, dark along the grooves and polished almost to gold in places. On each side of the knot there’s a small, perfect wing.

“The ribbon goes tied just behind the head with the bell hanging beneath. Beautiful, isn’t it? ”

I tie the ribbon in a bow just as he says. It really is stupidly beautiful.

“Do you collect these?”

He laughs at that.

“You would think so, wouldn’t you? But no, most of these are gifts - all, in fact, I don’t remember ever commissioning one. They’re not uncommon gifts for wealthy alphas, people seem to assume we make near continuous use of them, whereas I’ve hardly used any of these.”

Not sure I believe that but I’m not about to argue.

“Could use this one as a paperweight.”

Another laugh.

“I suppose I could but really - I have too many to know what to do with. I have a matching pair carved out of rhinoceros horn in my dressing room earning their keep as bookends, didn’t you see them?”

“No.”

“Ah, here’s what I was looking for.”

I wrap up the bronze and look at the silver case Master Kenway’s holdin’. He opens it and inside, nestled in a piece of purple velvet, is a large ivory shaft, covered in carvings. Now that I see it I have a pretty good idea of how he’s going to use it and I think I can manage. It’s big but not nearly as big as Liam or Master Kenway.

But when I move to bend over the armchair, Master Kenway catches me and pulls me back onto the floor and up against him. He kisses my hair and there’s laughter in his voice when he speaks.

“Not yet, Shay! Here, let me show you.”

He slips his arms around me and shows me the toy. A smooth head but then rings of delicate carvings right down to the base.

“Tulips, palms trees and these are pomegranates - fertility symbols.”

“It’s beautiful. Must have been expensive.”

“Ruinous. It was given to me on behalf of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. My understanding is that they’d intended to give me a slave but when we intimated that I would not - _could_ not - accept such a gift, they gave me this instead. The ambassador who presented me with it said this model came highly recommended by the august members of his Imperial Majesty’s harem.”

I touch it and find it cool and smooth, no roughness or sharp edges anywhere, and polished to a high shine.

Master Kenway twists the bottom and another shaft falls out of it - it’s smaller, simpler, and smooth. Then he pulls another smaller one out of this one, then another, all nested one inside the other, smaller and smaller until the last one, smaller than his thumb.

“Have you never seen one of these, Shay? Some women and omegas use them during their heats to ease the cramps, using whatever size is comfortable.”

“Really?”

“Mmm.”

He’s smelling my hair again - what do I smell of? He did say I’m his type but others have said that before and it’s never been like this. He can’t seem to stop touching me, smelling me and kissing me and seems happy just watching me. I lean my head back against his shoulder and he immediately gives me a hard kiss and then another on the top of my head.

“Now, I suggest we start with the smallest one and work our way up, hmm? It should make things easier for you.”

A kiss against my ear and the goosebumps that run down my spine and along my arms are immediately warmed by Master Kenway’s body as I press myself against him.

“Aye, thank you, sir.”

“If you’re uncomfortable or you want me to stop for any reason then just say so, hmm? You mustn’t let me hurt you, Shay. That is _not_ part of our agreement.”

“Aye, sir…”

“Good.”

I’m still shivering at his approval when he lays the robe out on the armchair then carefully settles me over it, showering bites and kisses over my shoulders, down my back, lower and lower until he’s kissing me _there_ again and soon I feel the tip of his tongue, hard and pointed. He strokes a strong hand up and down my back as my whole body seizes in pleasure - oh gods, this might feel even better than being in this mouth. It’s getting harder to remember that I’m here on terms - just at the moment I feel like the luckiest person alive.

I can’t help a quiet whine when he stops but he presses two quick kisses on either side of the small of my back.

“Ready?”

“Aye.”

A moment later I feel the smallest of the shafts, slick with something, slide between my cheeks slowly before being carefully pushed into me. The ivory is so smooth and slippery now I can’t stop it from slipping in. It doesn’t hurt at all, just feels a little strange.

“All right, Shay?”

“Aye…”

And now his mouth is on me again, the tip of his tongue tracing circles around the ivory and I’m past caring what he might do to me later.

Master Kenway then eases the little ivory shaft out and replaces it with the next one, again coating it with something and sliding it over me so I know what size it is before he pushes it in. It is a little bigger than the first but still goes in easily and I glance back at him, wondering at how patient he is, but he looks so pleased and when he catches my eye his smile widens and he leans over to kiss my hair and then my mouth when I turn my head. Then he nuzzles my hair again and I feel my entire body relax under his warm one.

_He’s not Liam._

Sudden fear jolts through me as I think of Liam and what he would do if he saw me like this and Master Kenway immediately presses a hand onto the small of my back to stop me from moving.

“Shay?”

“It was nothin’. Just a chill.”

Not sure he believes me. He strokes a hand up and down my back for a while and eventually continues, moving onto the next shaft.

Soon I close my eyes, relaxed into half-sleep but shaken by jolts of pleasure at the same time. Sometimes I glance back at Master Kenway but he looks happy so I stop worrying about him.

The shafts are bigger now, and longer, I can feel them stretch me as they go in and can feel them travel deeper inside me, and he started to moving them in and out slowly. I’m so wet that there’s almost no friction and when there is it’s… pleasant, more than pleasant.

Master Kenway did say he’s experienced but… he must be _very_ experienced. And is it possible for a person to enjoy _giving_ pleasure as much as he does? He still occasionally puts his mouth to me in between changing shafts and I’ve never felt pleasure like when he pushes his tongue into me, deeper each time, the shudder and the rush of heat that go through me. I feel that same hot, melting wetness inside me and whenever I do he sucks at me, as if to drink from me.

A small bite just below the small of my back and suddenly my body tenses hard in pleasure and I can’t help a gasp as my it tightens around the thick ivory. Aye, I‘d never thought of it before but I understand why omegas would use these during their heats. The spasms I feel are as intense but instead of feeling that kind of strange empty soreness my body just _sings_ when it tightens around the thing inside me and feels so _full_.

“Please, sir!”

“Just one more, Shay, the last one, hmm?”

I nod and he nuzzles my hair and my body _tightens_ as he slowly eases the shaft out of me. When I feel him rub the next shaft over me I feel its shape and the carvings on it and I realise its the largest one but I’m not worried. I guess I’m tired past worrying but I also… I trust Master Kenway. He won’t hurt me more than he needs to.

I can hear his uneven breath close to my ear as he slowly eases it into me, nuzzling my hair and stroking his hand up and down my side as I tense at being so stretched.

“Easy, Shay. It’s almost in.”

A moment later the head slips in and I bite my arm to keep from crying out in pleasure and relief.

One last hard kiss against my ear and Master Kenway straightens and when I look back at him he’s looking down at me, gently kneading my cheeks and touching around the ivory with gentle fingertips. I can just see the part of the shaft that's not inside me and I guess I should be embarrassed but when I see his expression - so _pleased_ , nothing dark, nothing violent - I’m just relieved that he takes such pleasure in _this_ and not other things.

When he pushes it into me I can’t help a small cry and I muffle the next ones against my fist as he slowly starts moving it inside me, the friction from the carvings makes my head burst with white hot stars, and when he slips his hand between my legs and starts stroking me, the heat and the feeling of _that thing_ inside me are too much and I know I can’t take much more of this and I want Master Kenway to be inside me when-

“Sir, please! I…!”

“It's all right, Shay, I know.”

I bite down on the robe when he starts to ease the shaft out of me but I can’t help a small yelp when the head catches - I’m going to come.

Soon I feel him pressed against me, pushing slowly, pushing down, and I feel myself open up to him. He’s so good at this. I’ve been told by a lot of the girls I’ve been with that I’m good at this but Master Kenway is _really_ good at this.

Even so, he’s big - too big for me - and even though his hands on me are soothing and his voice reassuring he’s stretching me too much and I can’t help tensing, waiting for that sharp pain of ripped flesh that must come soon.

“Easy, Shay… Easy… I’m going to bite your neck, it’ll be easier for you.”

_No, not that!_

But I can’t deny him, I mustn’t, so I bite my knuckle instead and wait as he continues to whisper against my skin.

“It’s all right, Shay. Just relax. Close your eyes, hawkling.”

His voice in my ear then his mouth at the nape of my neck then his teeth, an open bite against the back of my neck and as he squeezes gently I feel all my muscles go limp. My whole body shivers but I can hardly move at all - I try to grip the robe but when I watch my fingers move, barely move, it’s like they belong to someone else.

With my eyes closed I _feel_ even more than I did and I break out in cold sweat as he continues to stretch me then finally he’s in. He’s in.

Cold sweat drenches my entire body and I open my eyes to blink away the start of tears.

No tearing but the stretch is _searing_ and I think if one of us breathes it will become too much.

I still can’t move but after a minute or two the pressure from the teeth on my neck slowly fades and I feel the rasp of Master Kenway’s tongue over my skin before he mouthes it and when he speaks his voice is thick and cracked.

“Are you all right, Shay?”

“Aye, I just… I just…”

“Take as long as you need.”

He rubs my side and rests his head between my shoulder blades while he waits.

I can’t make my body relax, I want him out of me and inside me. My gut is still twisting and cryin’ out for what it nearly got and hasn’t had yet but my nerves are twitching and jumpy because I’m terrified I’m going to feel something inside me rendand all the time a voice in my head keeps tellin’ me that _Master Kenway is waiting_.

So I bow my head and press my forehead against the cotton of the robe.

“I… I’m ready.”

No pain as he sinks in, I guess by now we’re both slick with whatever he’s been using, and instead there’s that hard, intrusive, gratifying _fullness_ and as starts to slowly move back and forth inside me, barely at all, I turn all to flames and my balls tighten.

“You can… go deeper.”

“Thank you, Shay. I will go a little deeper in just a moment but I think that will be enough for a first time.”

He sounds polite but I can hear it in the way he tries too hard to sound in control, in the strain in his usually easy voice, and his forced carelessness - just how much he wants to fuck me. And when he straightens and puts his hands on my hips, I fist the robe beneath me and brace myself, shuddering as he pushes in deeper, and then again a little deeper and - _oh!_

Blind and deaf, I gasp as he brushes against something that sends black ice licking through veins before flooding them with fire. 

“There you go, Shay. Don’t hold back.”

He thrusts harder now, always hitting _that place_ , and when I open my mouth to cry out I can’t because I’ve forgotten to breathe, forgotten how to think, and there’s no air left in my body.

Something brushes the skin behind my balls and I just have time to bite down on a fistful of cotton before I feel a blaze of hot-white. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, one of our history teachers once took our year on a field trip to go and see a Roman aqueduct. We get there and he points to a carving on the side of it.
> 
> “What do you think that is?” he asks.
> 
> It looks like nothing and we tell him so.
> 
> “Doesn’t it look like a hare?”
> 
> We squint and well, not really but idk, maybe? If it had swallowed a dachshund and its hind legs had atrophied?
> 
> “Well, it’s a phallus,” says he.
> 
>  
> 
> True story.
> 
>  
> 
> My question: *who is the dick in this story?*


	7. Haytham | An Occupying Force

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spiralling further and further into lust for Shay, Haytham engages a hostile takeover of what he thinks is Liam's property. 
> 
> Haytham's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ALL WARNINGS AND TAGS APPLY IN THIS CHAPTER*
> 
> Please read them and exercise discretion, they are even more applicable in this chapter than they were in the previous one.  
> In particular, dub-con and implied non-con. 
> 
> Additional warnings in footnotes.  
> (Still new to these so I will update them as I become aware of them and what they're called.)

**HAYTHAM**

_“Te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,_  
_secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.”_  
_\- Pablo Neruda -_

 

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

Shay is a mess.

Propping myself up against the armchair, I draw him into my lap, bundling him up in blankets, and press my mouth to the bridge of his nose - already my spot.

Finally, he raises those cataclysmic eyes, hooded and chthonic, and smiles faintly.

“Can we do it again?”

I smother a silent laugh against his hair.

“When you’re rested, Shay.”

“Tonight?”

This time I can’t help laughing aloud.

“Yes, I give you leave to wake me as often as you like to demand sex. That’s why I brought you here, after all, to be used. But rest now.”

Shay takes a long look at me, unfazed, and returns my kiss warmly, lazily.

I stroke his hair, now slightly damp with sweat, and he tucks himself against my neck, on my shoulder. Gradually his breathing and heartbeat slow and even.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, but… you didn’t finish.”

I laugh and nip his earlobe.

“Oh no, I’m nowhere near finished with you, Shay.”

“Should I...?”

“Don’t worry, hawkling. I’ll let you rest a moment longer then I’ll take my own pleasure.”

Not much longer, however, since the press of his firm flesh against my still-hard member keeps my increasingly pressing need at the front of my mind.

“Will… will it always be like that?”

“Oh no. No, that was nothing, just a trifle to help you get into the spirit of things. Most of the time it will be a lot better.”

Nothing - _nothing_ \- could be more gratifying than his sharp look of wonder.

“Really?”

I can’t help a smirk as I lean in to mouth his ear then murmur into it.

“I could have done _that_ with my fingers.”

A shiver goes through him and he looks at me, his gaze open and unflinching.

“Why… why did you bite me?”

“Ah, yes, I’m sorry about that, Shay. I hadn’t intended to but I was worried I might hurt you if I couldn’t make you relax just a little more.”

“How…?”

“We’re not sure. It’s likely a form of domination. Most alphas bite out of instinct and everyone else, even other alphas, submit. A form of control without injury. And, of course, most women and omegas cannot safely take a knot without being bitten.”

“Do all alphas do it?”

“No. Some know to do it, some do it out of instinct, those that have neither impetus don’t do it.”

Shay gazes at me a moment, his expression mild but unreadable.

“How do you know these things?”

“I was taught. As I was taught so many other things.”

“Ah, so that’s why…”

He stops, sweetly embarrassed, and I brush my thumb along his bottom lip.

“Why what, Shay?”

“Why… you’re so good at…”

His teeth rake over the ball of my thumb gently when I rub it over his parted lips.

“At…?”

Pushing my thumb into his mouth, I press it onto his tongue.

“ _Pleasing you?_ ”

Pressing down gently, I force his mouth open before covering it with mine and pushing my tongue into it. I can’t help a low groan as he sucks on it and when I feel a throb in my knot I pull away.

“Come, Shay.”

I help him straddle me then skim a hand down his back to stroke it between his pale cheeks while Shay stretches his arms over my shoulders and buries his forehead against the crook of my neck and shoulder. Clumsily, while mouthing his ear and the curve of his jaw, I reach for the vial of ointment, spill too much of it onto my hand and coat myself with it, rubbing the excess onto Shay before pressing one then two fingers into him - he’s still tight but slick so they slip in easily enough.

A sharp indrawn breath against my skin and a shudder.

“It’s all right, Shay. I’ll take care of you.”

This is madness. I should take him from behind, giving myself freedom of movement and maximum control, _not_ allow him to put his arms around my neck after I’ve taught him how to make me helpless, not allow his hands and his teeth so close to my throat, and _certainly not_ allow him on top of me like this with his weight on me. But I want him to look into my eyes as I take him, to push my tongue deep into his mouth, to watch his whole body _blaze_ with the pleasure I give him andI can’t see through this aching, yearning, disastrous agony of need to possess him, his body, his mind, his soul, his skin - I want him to drink my seed, my spit, my blood and my sweat, to get into the very fabric of his flesh.

My hands on his hips, I guide him, lifting him off my lap before carefully positioning myself at his entrance.

“Could you bite me again? Please?”

And this so shyly, so husky and full of trust.

“All right, hawkling, but just this once.”

Even as I say it I feel that particular chill of gratification at indulging my partner.

Shay bows his head, resting it against me, baring his nape as I breach him slowly, slowly pushing into him, listening to the small gasps I wring from him. He bears with it as long as he can but eventually his breathing quickens and his grip on me tightens.

“Breathe, Shay.”

I bite him carefully, holding until his body has drawn me in and settled. When I release him I mouth his skin again to soothe him as he quivers in my arms. Shay’s still as tight as he was the first time so I guide him slowly. Penetration still makes him anxious, which is understandable, but he’s already learning to enjoy the feel of me sinking into him and he gasps softly throughout, breath hitching, and he raises his gaze to me, seeming as entranced with what he sees as I am.

Grabbing his cheeks, I guide him, slow and steady, taking some of the burden of his weight so that he doesn’t impale himself on me too quickly. He’s so beautiful, his pale skin gleaming with sweat and his lips part in a gasp of surprise as I take him deep, far deeper than before. Our mouths are so close that our breaths mingle and I brush my lips over his, teasing him, frustrating him, since he’s helpless to respond, his arms wrapped around me to support his trembling body. Taking pity on him, I place my mouth over his as I finish seating myself inside him, swallowing his gasps, running my hands up and down his back soothingly, feeling the violent tremors that shake him slowly die down. His body’s far, far too sensitive, he must have suffered agonies with O’Brien.

“Easy, Shay, easy. There. Let’s just be together a moment.”

Shay looks at me, lost, peaceful, hungry.

“Is… this what you wanted?”

“I hadn’t dared hope for this much, Shay. Is it uncomfortable?”

“It’s… it’s just… new.”

We stay like this a while and he stares, riveted, as I flick the tip of my tongue over his bottom lip, then his top one, then the tip of his tongue when it slips out between his parted lips, and for a moment we bask in the warmth between us and the pleasure of being together.

But Shay is impatient and soon he’s moving in my lap, stifling small moans of impatience as he bites my mouth then my jaw.

“Slowly, Shay. Like this.”

I show him how to move and we rock together gently, Shay burying his face against my neck, gasping as he tries, learns.

“There. Take what you need, Shay. There’s always pleasure in it for me.”

He looks into my eyes searchingly, his hair clinging to his face where it has beaded with sweat. His expression grows dark and hawklike as his dark eyes bore into mine.

I have an arm wrapped around him, holding him close, while my free hand is buried in his hair, rubbing his temple with my thumb. His breathing comes shallow and uneven from between bruised, pinkened lips, his skin glistening with sweat, he’s more beautiful than ever, more beautiful than anyone I’ve ever seen.

Shay must see something of what I feel because his eyes suddenly soften to velvet, soften more than they have so far, and he leans in to kiss me deeply. Not just giving but for the first time taking and hungry and I indulge him. Now his mouth and his hands are everywhere at once, on my mouth, on my neck, in my hair, clawing at my back.

This naked hunger, unleashed in an instant, soon leaves me breathless. The jerks of his hips becomes more demanding and his body now clenches around me so tightly that I find myself gasping in exquisite near-pain and I don’t know myself if the hand I keep nestled firmly on his rump is there to moderate or encourage him.

I let him ride me, mouthing his skin as his nails rake mine. I reach down and start stroking his shaft and soon he’s shivering on the edge of release and looks into my eyes again, desperate.

“Will you…?”

“Yes, hawkling.”

Grabbing his taut cheeks again, I snap my hips up into him, breathing out a silent groan of relief just before his wet hot heat crushes me and I continue to thrust through his climax before allowing myself to peak, feeling his body tense again as I spend myself inside him.

“There. Breathe, Shay.”

He drapes himself onto me limply, his face buried against my neck. Eventually he moves to disengage himself but I tighten my hold on him to make him still.

“Not yet, Shay.”

Dragging the robe from the armchair, I wrap it around him and a throw around the two of us then rock him gently, smiling into his hair and against his ear, throbbing with contentment. I can still feel the tremors that shake him and the flutter muscles around my softening length.

He hisses sharply when I finally ease him off myself and onto the floor, throwing the towelling robe over him and rubbing him down briskly, feeling another surge of pleasure at the look of delight on his face. Laying down beside him, I draw him up against me under the blankets, fearful he will catch cold though in truth we’re well within reach of the fire’s warmth.

Shay curls up by me, one of his arms curved over my chest, his head resting on my shoulder.

“Did I hurt you, Shay?”

“No.”

“Are you sore?”

“No. And I’m not tired…”

His voice is low, husky, shy and intimate. I smile and move my mouth down to the bridge of his nose.

“I’m glad, but there’s no rush.”

“Should I… do anything?”

“Nothing you don’t want to, Shay. Just let me enjoy you, I take pleasure in this part too.”

After nudging his nose gently, I kiss him slowly, coaxing him into responding, then settle him back down so I can look at him. He watches me, calm and comfortable but gently enquiring.

“What is it, Shay?”

“Don’t you have someone to…?”

“Provide me with these services on a more regular basis? No. I haven’t met anyone suitable and the more expensive sortof paid company usually suffices, plus the occasional chance encounter. Besides, I think it would be a dangerous part to play, that of my companion. Achilles kept his wife and child safely tucked away at the Homestead for a reason.”

“It didn’t save them.”

“No… I was sorry to hear of that.”

He’s quiet a moment as I stroke his hair, carding it gently.

“You never attacked them though, did you?”

“I did not, no. Liam, you, all your comrades and even Achilles himself I consider fair game if you stand in our way but otherwise I prefer to live and let live. It’s why I’ve never allowed an attack on the Homestead. There’s always the chance Achilles will come to his senses and besides, though I disagree with some of your ideals even I admit men like de la Verendrye and the work they do benefit humanity as a whole. One cannot go about killing useful, resourceful men indiscriminately. I held even less against - Abigail, wasn’t it? -and the child.”

“Connor.”

“Yes. Odd choice.”

“Liam chose it.”

“Ah yes, of course.”

During the ensuing silence, I see a few frowns glide over Shay’s face. Is he wondering what Achilles might do to a mate and child of mine given half an opportunity?

I nudge his nose and he instinctively tilts his head up for a kiss.

“Didn’t know it could be like this.”

“Not even with your girls in Havana?”

He shakes his head.

“Is it always like this for you?”

“Do you mean for alphas or for me?”

“Both… I suppose.”

“Alphas… We’re not so different from betas and omegas and, well, you know what it feels like, don’t you, Shay? You’ve experienced it with your Havana girls. There is almost always pleasure in it for us. Alphas are a little harder to satisfy, that’s why we’re drawn to intense pleasures. But omegas… omegas _can_ be pleased in this way, just as women can, but it takes a little care, skill and patience.”

I plunder his mouth lazily then smile down at him.

“And, in your case, some imagination and just a touch of rough play.”

No awkwardness as he looks up at me while I stroke his hair, running my gaze over him slowly.

Shay is more beautiful than ever, the flush of pleasure along his cheekbones and his dark, bruised lips adding to the drama of his colouring. His usually animated features are still, their savagery and harshness softened by their immobility, his quiet contentment and a measure of exhaustion. His face is still swollen in places but not enough to disguise or even detract from his handsomeness.

“Is that what you like too?”

“Mmm. Which brings me to my second point. No, it’s not always like this, Shay. Even taking into account my fund of experience and that blissful body of yours, there’s an extra spark between us - a chemistry, a compatibility.”

I nudge his nose with mine and bite his mouth gently.

“It’s never been like this for me either… What _are_ we going to do, Shay?”

“I wouldn’t mind doing what we did before again.”

I can’t help laughing at this literal answer.

“What exactly?”

He lowers his gaze briefly and I bite his ear sharply.

“Well, Shay?”

“Just now… when I was on top.”

“Ah, _that_. Yes, I thought you’d enjoy that.”

He smiles at my pleasure, glowing under a slight sheen of sweat. I stroke his hair gently and he closes his eyes, practically purring. His hand splays over my chest possessively and he presses a kiss against my skin, wet and warm, before moving up, both robe and blanket slipping from his shoulders as he leans in to kiss me then draws back slightly, surprised, when he senses the hunger in me.

“You still…?”

“Oh yes, Shay, but you need rest.”

He settles onto me, almost liquid, and we kiss again, long and gentle. His velvety eyes are so trusting, so willing, but I know he’s had a long, trying day and needs rest.

“We’ll do it again tomorrow, hmm?I think we could both do with some sleep.”

Shay hesitates a moment then his expression becomes all innocence and sweetness.

“Once more?”

“Shay…”

“You promised!”

“Shay-!”

“You did! You said I could ask for sex as often as I wanted.”

“I did, but-.”

“Just once more.”

Now he presses a kiss against my throat, then my chin, moving up to the corner of my mouth, his body pressed close against mine.

“Once more and then I’ll go to sleep. I’ll be good, I promise, sir.”

Oh, he is _irresistible_.

“You little terror.”

He beams, radiant at this small victory, and mouths my ear.

“How…? How will you take me?”

Oh god, and that husky, throaty voice sets my blood on fire. I move quickly and catch his ear between my teeth.

“How do you want it?”

While he hesitates, I bite and mouth his neck gently.

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Nothing too rough, hmm? I’ll take you from behind again, it will be easier for you.”

He nods shyly and bites my jaw gently.

“All right, but I… I want you to finish.”

From hesitant his tone becomes suddenly determined but he doesn’t quite dare order me, making him sound more like a petulant child.

“How demanding you’ve become in such a short amount of time, hawkling. I _have_  been spoiling you. Very well. Not hard, but deep then.”

He nods, his lips against my neck.

“Let’s see if we can make you a little wetter first, hmm?”

Quickly and carefully, I settle him onto his stomach with his knees tucked up beneath him before settling over him, leaning one of my forearms on the ground before him. He moans softly as I slip a couple of fingers into him again, slowly feeling around inside him. He’s learning to enjoy this too.

A yelp from Shay when I find what I’m looking for and I start to quickly thrust my fingers in and out of him, always aiming for the same spot, making him spend himself in a matter of seconds. His nails dig into my arm as he grips me then a painful bite as I keep up the same pace, his entire body rigid and quivering as he braces himself against the onslaught and the hard spasms that wrack him again and again.

Burying my face against his hair and closing my eyes to better enjoy the obscene wet sounds , I continue for what feels like a suspended eternity but is probably only a couple of minutes, then slow and nearly stop, only moving my fingers enough for him to feel them, waiting for him to settle and when he does he looks at me over his shoulder - exhausted, accusing, worshipful and fearful all at once.

We share an open-mouthed, unhurried kiss and I feel all the tension leach out of his body.

Pulling out of him, I grab a few pillows and tuck them under his hips as I ease him onto all fours, giving him another to hold onto. His long thighs are streaked with moisture that I lap up with a few rasping licks before drawing his soft pouch into my mouth to suck it clean then moving a little higher and forcing my tongue into him, his body clenching and arching up as my mouth is flooded with warmth. Coaxing him open with my thumbs, I dribble our combined fluids back into him.

Straightening, I stroke myself into hardness while Shay watches me over his shoulder with smouldering eyes.

“Do you want… to knot me?”

“Have you done it before?”

“No but - I don’t mind.”

“I think we’d best leave it for another time then.”

I start to push myself into him but again there is resistance. If he could bring himself to relax there would be no need for me to bite him but that instinct will difficult to stamp out and this is no time for a lesson. Shay’s sigh of relief is audible when I bite him.

Soon enough his body draws me in and I straighten, rolling my hips slowly and deliberately, drawing out a little before pushing in a little deeper each time.

“Arch your back for me, Shay.”

He obeys and I mount him a little higher, pressing a hand into the small of his back.

“A little more.”

Keeping my hand on his back I push deeper, bearing down to ease into that passage particular to omegas, and Shay muffles a low gasp against the pillow before bucking slightly against me.

“Easy, Shay. When you’re stronger I’ll give you the pounding you crave but not now, hawkling. Now I’m going to bury myself deep inside you, Shay, then deeper still. I’m going to sink as deep into you as I can and fill you like nobody else ever has.”

I feel a violent tremor go through him and he whispers against the pillow.

“Please.”

Rolling my hips slowly, I sink steadily deeper, revelling in his tight, wet heat and his long-drawn shuddering sighs - I could do this for hours.

A sharp gasp from Shay as I eventually come up against the barrier deep inside him and I roll my hips a little harder to stimulate it, watching the way each thrust pushes his beautiful taut cheeks up against my stomach and sends a jolt through his body.

When I slow, Shay looks askance at me, hooded eyes heavy with lust and mild confusion.

“Will you let me take you deeper, Shay?”

“Aye, but I… don’t know how…”

“Keep your back arched and relax, just relax against me. I’ll take care of everything.”

He nods and lays his head down on the pillow, his whole body slackening and settling. Leaning over him, I rest my forearms along his and nuzzle his hair, smiling at his pleased hum. He tenses as I start to move again but only a moment and though he grips my hand - twining his fingers with mine, something I’ve never done before - he manages not to resist me as I push through.

Once he draws me in, however, his whole body tightens and as I start to move he bites my arm to keep from crying out. He won’t last long so I enjoy every thrust, running a hand over his flank to splay it over his stomach, beneath his navel, and when I press upwards gently I can just feel my erection against my palm as it moves inside him.

Shay’s bite hardens painfully so I mouth his ear.

“Go on, Shay. Don’t hold back.”

He comes instantly and I hold him throughout, still rolling my hips steadily as hard spasms run through him then lessen and weaken, and though he releases my arm his body is still hit by tremors as I spill myself inside him, again and again.

Shay returns my kiss weakly but warmly then shifts, trying to disengage himself and though I stop him quickly he gasps.

“Just a moment, Shay. We have to wait for your body to loosen and for mine to soften.”

Sleepily confused, he looks up at me.

“But you didn’t…?”

“No, I didn’t knot you but I am caught fairly tightly inside you. Is it uncomfortable?”

“No… It’s just… new.”

He settles his head on our linked hands and closes his eyes, and I stroke his hair gently.

This is something even experienced professionals sometimes object to. A heated bout of sex is like a duel to first blood, with each participant seeking to give as good as they get and all the fire of a skirmish. But this - this continued and prolonged penetration outside coitus - _this_ is an occupying force, in the face of which the only possibilities are resistance or capitulation. This is the third time I’ve done it to Shay, each time for increasingly longer periods, and though I still feel the occasional quiver, he’s becoming accustomed to it.

I remember the first time it was done to me, before full intercourse, as part of my initiation and _I hated it_. I hated the discomfort of it and the humiliation of feeling that I wasn’t free and the impotent rage at not being able to do anything about it. For what felt like hours I stayed rigid and still to avoid creating friction, but always aware - and sometimes _reminded_ by the slightest intentional thrust - of that foreign and unwelcome _thing_ inside me and the person to whom I had to submit or risk injury. A man who was masked whenever I saw him so that I would better dissociate the person from the experience, as Reginald explained to me before he packed me off for a month without even Barrington - the longest time we were ever apart before I reached full adulthood.

My knot still feels tight and uncomfortable. Shay’s offer to let me knot him has unsettled me at a moment when I’m already losing some of my self-control. I put my hand back on his abdomen and wonder if he can still feel the heat of my seed in him.

Nothing I did to Shay tonight is unknown to me, I consented to all of it and a great deal more for the sake of experience in that month. I was never taken in blood the way poor Shay has been but I was once taken dry - it was the only time I have cried since the night my parents died. I was bitten and forced to accept a knot and _that_ I hated more than anything I’ve experienced since - including a few near fatal injuries. Of course, afterwards I was coached and taught to enjoy being tied to - not that I would ever admit it, the prejudice against alphas enjoying being taken by other alphas - or worse still, a beta - being what it is.

And I was then taught to do to others what had been done to me.

Reginald supposed just knowing would be enough and he was right. Most of the things I learnt then I’d never used until today but the knowledge of it, and the knowing of what I could do with this knowledge, is in my blood now. I transpire it from every pore and other alphas smell the essence of it - that if being an alpha is about sex, then I can wield that weapon better than most.

It’s a weapon I could use against Liam O’Brien. I likely won’t have him killed but I could teach him a lesson before sending him back to his mentor. What I told Shay is true, I could force O’Brien to accept a knot and force him to ejaculate while tied to me - he would take that as a sign of pleasure. He would have to live out the rest of his life thinking that for one hour he had a Grand Master’s knot and his seed inside him and that he enjoyed it so much he came. How many times could I make him come inside an hour? Three, four, perhaps even five times - if he has a short recovery period?

He certainly deserves little better. Shay will bear the scars - physical and psychological - for the rest of his life. He still startles at how easily I can press in the head of my erection and I fear that now he knows that a bite makes things easier for him he may never learn to do without.

Meanwhile, I’m still hard and swollen. I’ve been holding back, fearful of hurting or frightening Shay, and that talk of knotting hasn’t helped.

Leaning in, I kiss his shoulder.

“Shay? Shay, I’m sorry, I’m not done yet.”

Sleepy and contented, he turns, lips already parted for a kiss.

“I don’t mind.”

Carefully, I start to move inside him again and though he must be exhausted he comes in a matter of minutes, our fingers in his mouth, and I peak soon after.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings: abuse, biting, bodily fluids, domination, fingerfucking, manipulation. 
> 
>  
> 
> Also, last sex for two chapters at least.


	8. Liam | Confinement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, Liam is still locked up in a cell with nothing to do but reminisce about Shay and think about how much he loathes Haytham.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Warnings apply*

_"Je n'ai pas grand chose à te dire et pas grand chose pour te faire rire_

_Car j'imagine toujours le pire et le meilleur me fait souffrir."_

_J'ai demandé à la lune - Indochine_

**____________________________**

**LIAM**

_Arsenal, New York, December 1755_

 

A twitter of banter then a burst of blood-red light behind my closed lids as moonlight hits them.

They’re changing the guards outside. There’s only one small high barred window in this whole room, at ground level. The guards stand just outside, blocking it, and when they move a shaft of moonlight hits my eyes. This is the third change, I’ve probably been here about six hours.

A muffled burst of laughter. Three guards are in the next room, playing cards with a fourth who is no longer on duty. They’ve had a busy evening. They received a load of files - from Kenway, no doubt - and a handful of regulars spent a few solid hours going through them, probably to cross-reference the information and our identities with their own records. Caraway andThompson were soon moved out, tagged and ready to go.

I was brought a dinner of sorts - a piece of bread, some cheese, an apple in a bag and a goatskin canteen of watered down whiskey - the only thing that helps me keep warm. Each thing was tossed through the bars without unlocking the door while two regulars kept their pistols trained on me. Kenway’s doing. He must still have plans for me - that’s the good news, I suppose.

God, I hope somebody realises we’re missing.

I hadn’t set a time or date for our departure yet and for the first time I wish I told the _Morrigan’_ s crew more about my plans. Shay and I sometimes leave the ship for days on end almost without warning when we’re on missions and so the men stopped worrying about our whereabouts years ago. And if the crew don’t send word back to Achilles it’ll be days before I’m missed.

If Hope were still in New York she might have gone to the Fort, out of personal interest, around this time of night, as she has in the past. As I have done in the past to see her. But I wanted Achilles to know we’d caught up with Shay and that he didn’t have the manuscript on him so I sent her on ahead to the homestead. She gets seasick and had to go back on horseback anyway. She was impatient at having to ride side-saddle 'til the city limits - she has no patience for that kind of thing but we can’t afford to be noticed just now. How I'm going to explain this mess to her or Achilles I don't know. 

In the moment Kenway took Shay, I thought he knew. About everything - that we’d recovered both the manuscript and box and found a way to make them work, about the Temple in Lisbon and the Piece of Eden there, and about Shay. Why else would he take him instead of me?

I was sure he must have heard something.

Of course he can’t know it all, even at the Homestead only a handful of people know exactly what happened. But he could have heard something. It all happened over a week ago and since then we’ve had search parties visit every village and frontier camp, and every available ship beating up and down the coast looking for Shay - not something that goes unnoticed. Those bastard Templars have eyes and ears everywhere and any activity of ours is of interest to the all-knowing Grand Master Kenway. He might have heard Shay’s name and recognised it.

But no. We were careful. Kesegowaase rallied his kinsmen and tribal allies and Hope came to New York herself to question and use her gang contacts - we did everything we could to keep the whole thing quiet.

And besides, I can believe the reason Kenway gave.

How many times have I had to shield Shay from just that sort of attention? Wasn’t it to protect him from men like Kenway that I did as Hope suggested and brought him to the homestead as my intended? Most betas take Shay for one of them but how many times have I seen alphas look at him the way Kenway did? With a smile that says clear as day that they want to fuck him. I never understood it myself - Shay’s body feels pleasant enough, I suppose, but nothing special. But then he’s not my type, never has been.

Turning onto my side, I feel the stiffness in my shoulders. They refused to give me a blanket. No doubt bloody Kenway warned them not to give me anything bigger than a handkerchief.

One of the flagstones beside me is lit up by a shaft of light. Kesegowaase and his people have a nickname for Shay in their own tongue - _night of moonlight and starlight_ \- something about his eyes, I think, or maybe his skin.

His litter is still in the next cell, barely an inch thick. I can still picture him lying there, I remember the look in his eyes when he opened them and saw me. That look and this continued, obstinate disobedience.

I don’t recognise this Shay at all. This Shay is a stranger to me.

Does he see a stranger too? Oh, he’s seen me angry once or twice before. But never with him. In all the years I’ve known him, all the years of shielding him, taking the blame for him, training him, and providing for him despite my responsibilities, his recklessness, and my own desires, I never once raised my voice to him, let alone a hand, until that night at the Homestead.

Of course I overindulged him - how many times did Hope tell me so? But Shay never means to do evil. He may be hasty and doesn’t always think before actin’, but that’s just because his heart is so full and so close to the surface. He was like that as a child - cheerful, unthinkingly generous, and, at the heart of him, the sweetest creature I know. When he lived on the streets he stole and brawled not because he wanted to or because he enjoyed it but to provide for others like himself and protect them. Because he knew that he’s faster and stronger than most and he thought it the most natural thing in the world to help. No, his actions may be rash and misguided at times but he always means well. Even all of this, his taking the manuscript, it was just Shay doing what he thinks best, and if I’d just talked him through it he’d have seen that this is just his reaction to the earthquake and the failure of his mission.

It might be too late now. Whatever idea Shay’s gotten into that head of his, it’s stopped him from listening to anything I say. My words don’t reach him.

This is not the Shay I know, not the Shay I’ve known all my life, since the first time I saw him when he was less than a day old and not even as long as my forearm. Premature and his mother dead in childbirth, the way he was passed around you’d have thought he was the little baby Jesus himself. I was only five but they let me hold him just for a moment. I still remember it. Fingers and toes so tiny they could barely even get around my small fingers though he did try, a body so transparent I could almost see the heart whose beat was so weak I had to concentrate enough to make the world stand still to hear or feel it. His eyes weren’t open yet but he already had dark wisps of hair. It was like touching the _idea_ of a human being rather than a real one. And my mother solemnly telling me that since Shay would have no mother or siblings to take care of him, I should be a brother to him.

And I was. I took care of him until his father took him off to sea with him when Shay was seven, just months before the incident. After that I wandered the streets alone, waiting and hoping that when the ship returned they would take me on, wishing that I had joined them when Capatain Patrick Cormac had offered, but they were away for months and Achilles found me. And when I heard Shay’s father had died and that Shay was likely back in New York, I searched high and low until I found him - alone and unprotected and an _omega_. God, even now, whenever I think back I can still feel it, the wretch of terror deep in my gut. Reckless, cheerful, and even more beautiful at fifteen than he was as a child.

Aye, he’s always been beautiful, even I can see that, but there’s something more. Haytham Kenway isn’t the first alpha who’s wanted to take my Shay from me. He’s only the first to succeed.

Did he mean it - about Shay being his type? Would he really…?

Aye, I think he would. Master Kenway may dress like a gentleman and even speak like one, he may wander round straightbacked and with his hands clasped behind his back like he wouldn’t know how to do up his own breeches but I’ve seen him kill with those hands and I know they’re covered in blood and not just Assassin blood either. Braddock was a Templar and yet Kenway chose to kill him himself while wearing a uniform taken from the body of a British soldier he’d murdered for it. He did not become the Order’s youngest Grand Master by accident - he fed his ambition with blood. Having his way with Shay would be nothing but a pleasure for a man like Grand Master Haytham Kenway - god knows he’s done worse

As my gut twists, I open the canteen and take a swallow of whiskey to wash away the foul taste in my mouth.

I know I hurt Shay - he’s an omega so there was no helping it and he always said he didn’t mind and that it was bearable. I usually took him fast and shallow, trying to finish quickly so I wouldn’t hurt him for longer than I had to. But it wasn’t enough - it's dry and chafing and nothing like going deep and _thrusting_  until you _really_ come. And aye, there were times, usually when I’d had too much to drink or felt frustrated or I’d had to go without for too long, when I _knew_ shouldn’t take him because I _knew_ I would lose control, and I did it anyway, pushing hard and deep until I was buried inside him, thrusting until I’d wrung out every last drop inside him. And I hated it. I hated his cries and the sharp wracking sobs that seemed torn from him - from my Shay who’s been shot and stabbed and once had his leg nearly shattered by a loose cannon on deck and never made a sound of complaint through any of it. I hated feeling his body break and bleed for me and I hated that it was the only way for me to get the release I needed and that it felt _good_.

And I hated myself afterwards and the only thing I could do was clean Shay up and wipe his tears and hold him in my arms like I did when we were small, like I’ve done ever since he learnt to walk and was forever scraping his knees, when a smile and a good laugh could fix anything. And each time I told myself it would be the last time but then after a month or two or threeI always lapsed. But even those times, I wasn’t trying to hurt Shay, I was just weak. Kenway could do a lot worse to him.

I taste copper and realise I’ve bitten my lip to blood.

Taking Shay back after that thing with Kesegowaase was hard enough but _this_ \- the thought of Kenway’s hands on my intended, his _cock_ inside him… I could never do it.

My nails have cut into my palms so I force my fists to unclench, breathing deep.

No, I could never take him back. Things can never go back to the way they were. If Shay gives us back the manuscript I might be able to convince Achilles to let him stay on at the homestead - not as an Assassin, of course, but maybe as a trainer or dockyard hand - but not as my intended. I’ve gone as far as I can with that sham and I’m tired of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit dissatisfied with this chapter but I don't know why so I can't fix it.  
> It may get rewritten in the future but the essentials are all there. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's left comments and kudos!


	9. Haytham | The Fledgling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haytham takes a moment to go over the events of the evening and his options going forward - until Shay wakes and distracts him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just plot.

**HAYTHAM**

 

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

The wild flicker of light distracts me from my writing so I pause to replace the nearly burnt-out candles with new ones before taking up my quill and diary again.

An incautious habit, perhaps, despite the cypher I use, but one I’ve been unable to break since I picked it up from my mentor as a child. The luxury of penning out one’s thoughts in longhand, the pen keeping slow pace with each thought pushed to all its possible conclusions then carefully ordered.

As the amount of responsibility and information I had to juggle increased, keeping a diary was no longer merely soothing, it became indispensable. My memory is as good as anyone’s but with so much resting on being able to remember the minutest details or the inflections of voice that give away a person’s true thoughts, the incomparable advantage of looking back and receiving my own impressions afresh outweighs the risks. The Order’s business is not recorded here, nothing in the way of longterm plans the discovery of which would endanger the Rite’s existence or overarching structure. And for every idea that I eventually adopt there are four that go no further than the page, with very little to distinguish between them.

Usually I sit at my secretary table before the fire with my evening tea or two fingers of my favourite single malt but tonight I just have the usual carafe of water on my bedside table, my lap and Shay’s body the length of mine as he sleeps easily, hugging a pillow. The fire has died down to silent, glowing embers and the whole house is cushioned in the stillness that follows a heavy snowfall. Barrington and Mrs Jeffries, our housekeeper, will have the kitchens going at full capacity tomorrow to make sure there’s hot food for everyone on the estate who needs it. I don’t dislike snow but I may never become accustomed to the harsh winters here in the northern colonies.

Settling into the pillows, I stretch my lethargic limbs carefully but even so Shay shifts and I smooth back his hair and draw the blankets up more securely around his shoulders. His profile is sharply picked out against the white pillow - a hawk even in sleep but there is enough of the fledgling left in him that he will take instruction. A fortuitous catch.

When I made Shay my offer I had only the mistiest expectations for our time together beyond the use of his body. I did not expect to let a trained Assassin sleep beside me in my bed and I certainly did not expect to find myself elbow-deep in soapy water and personal pleasure enhancers in the middle of the night. And I hadn’t expected to like Shay as much as I do.

Shay moves restlessly.

“I’m here, hawkling. You’re safe.”

He shifts back against me, perhaps for warmth, then lies easy again.

I ought to write about him too, especially now I’m considering taking him in. His situation still puzzles me, his two hidden blades in particular. Allowances might have been made if he really is O’Brien’s intended but I know Achilles and his mighty principles and he would never give one of these trainees a second blade unless he deserved it, regardless of special circumstances, so I can take that as some measure of Shay’s abilities. And what of O’Brien’s threat should he divulge anything? Did it refer to general information or a particular secret? He recognised the nature of my amulet - and distrusted it.

My gaze flickers to the horrific cut over Shay’s brow as he frowns slightly, as though my thoughts - suspicions? - were enough to disturb his sleep.

So instead I turn my mind to Liam O’Brien’s capture and what opportunities it might afford. O’Brien cannot be made to speak, I think. He will sit woodenly through an interrogation and will not break under pressure. He will require more inventive questioning and I find myself wondering if it can even be worth the trouble.

O’Brien might loose some small pieces of information to pacify me - convoy routes, perhaps even the location of some of their safe houses, empty ones of course. That will hardly give me a solid advantage and even if I squeeze him for all he’s worth, what truly vital information could he give me? The location of the Homestead? Where they keep the artefacts? Who their allies are? I already know these things. I know where the Homestead is, its topography, how many men and what equipment we’d need to storm it. I know they currently keep the artefacts there. I know which gangs they’re cooperating with in both Boston and New York and of their partnerships with pirates at sea. My problem is that I don’t have the manpower or resources to do anything about it and that the official powers that be have their hands too full with this war to pursue problems that are no longer a priority. And frankly, so do I.

I was being considered for the post of governor of New York before all these troubles began, resulting in the twin appointments of Sir Charles Hardy - a naval captain, soon to be admiral - as governor here and Lord Loudoun’s as Commander-In-Chief and governor of Virginia. But these are only temporary, intended only to last as long war does. The former governor, James DeLancey, has already made known his support for me and since Sir Charles and I seem to be of a mind, I expect he will not be an obstacle either. My visit to Europe included a flurry of visits in Whitehall as part of an informal vetting process but even so I will have to prove my worth.

Two years into this conflict and each day of it makes plainer that it is more than the skirmishes and posturing of ruling powers - we will endure many more years of this. It will cost fortunes of money and lives as all wars do but I worry it will bankrupt these colonies with lost opportunities and labour taken as sacrifice. We will prioritise the war effort at the expense of social progress and the fiscal reform that would soothe the undercurrent of unrest that continues to seethe beneath all the preparations of war. Fighting the French has created a sense of unity but it is a false one. The men fight for the Crown as well as themselves, they will expect rewards and barely receive recognition. If they beat the French they may one day think it would be as easy to defeat the English, not realising that they are not yet self-sufficient, that without the aide, the imports, the support of a greater, wealthier power they barely yet exist. Without this war and with concerted effort we might have achieved all this in as little as twenty years - perhaps even fewer since the resources and possibilities of these lands ceaselessly beat back the boundaries of the inconceivable.

I could deprive Achilles of his favourite and likely successor and the Brotherhood of its foremost recruiter, trainer and master assassin but that will hardly topple them. Achilles is only in his forties, he has plenty of time to choose a successor to take O’Brien’s place - the Chevalier de la Verendrye comes to mind. The only immediate difference will be that I’ll be most closely hunted and thwarted by someone else - likely that even larger brute, Kesegowaase.

No, O’Brien is more valuable to me as a bargaining chip than as a source of information. I _will_ try to trade him for a truce, a respite from the constant sabotage and harrying they subject us to, at least for the duration of this war - my Rite cannot fight it on two fronts and I suspect Achilles’ Brotherhood is the same. Naturally, once I release O’Brien back into Achilles’ despotic care I’ll have no guarantee but Achilles’ word - I could do worse, Achilles thinks himself honourable.

What of Shay? He’s too valuable to send back to Achilles. I could keep him as a guarantee. It would be an elegant way of extricating him, if he consents to being extricated. I have no illusions that cutting the no doubt myriad ties he has with Achilles Davenport and Liam O’Brien will be easy. I believe his pleasure tonight was unfeigned and I expect it would be difficult for him to go back to O’Brien’s particular brand of intimacy after his experience with me but their relationship was likely not built on shared physical pleasure. Shay said they are childhood friends - _that_ will be a difficult bond to break and I know first hand the hysterical devotion to ideology Achilles encourages in his myrmidons. Just because Shay has shown no sign of it yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t lie under the surface, though god knows O’Brien has enough of it for the both of them.

Shay is curious and willing to listen - perhaps if I bait my line with enough answers I’ll be able to reel him in. He would not be able to do any official work for the Order until the agreement lapsed but he would be here with me and he could spend the time in study, training and small, unobtrusive tasks.

Shay shifts again then turns his head, opening his sleepy, velvety eyes and I sink lower into the bed so I can help him onto his other side, drawing him closer and Shay settles his head onto my shoulder happily. When his gaze drops to the open diary on my lap he stiffens.

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“I don’t think you would get much from it at a passing glance.”

I show him the encrypted page.

“Your writing is beautiful. Mine’s like chicken scratch, Liam always says-.”

His brows furrow a moment but there’s no resistance in him when I tighten my hold on him to draw him closer to brush my lips against his hair.

“Would you like me to teach you? Here.”

I turn to a blank page and we smile and laugh as we trace his name and mine over and over, awkwardly, with his arm pinned between us and mine too free.

“Write from the elbow, not the wrist - this isn’t the best position for it. I’ll show you again in the morning.”

Turning the page, I help him trace word after word after word and he stiffens momentarily but doesn’t stop when he realises what we’re writing. When we’re finished he’s quiet a moment.

“Is this…?”

“The Order has had several depending on time and place, but this is the original oath, yes.”

As he traces the words with a fingertip I can feel him settle down against me again, the tension in his muscles easing.

“Achilles will send someone for me. Soon.”

“I expect so. But it’ll be a few days yet before he hears of your capture and mounts a rescue and he’s bound to send someone to retrieve O’Brien first.”

“He’ll start with me.”

_Ah._

“You’re sure?”

“Aye. He’ll send Kesegowaase.”

He goes so still after this confession that I think he has forgotten to breathe, so I press my lips to his forehead a moment.

“I’ll double the guard and the patrols.”

Nuzzling Shay’s ear, I consider the implications of his words. He gives a good impression of candour with his artless remarks and guileless looks but he has given very little away and this revelation iseven more cryptic than his silences.

What could make Shay more valuable to Achilles than even Liam O’Brien? What could make him so valuable that Achilles would risk one of his Master Assassins to rescue him?

_Another of his Master Assassins…_

Why did he tell me? No, why did he _warn_ me? For my safety? For his?

Oh yes, there’s more to this, but Shay has clearly said all he can or will for now so I’ll have to draw my own conclusions.

The low light casts the long shadows of his lashes onto his cheeks and though I can’t quite see his expression, something in the tilt of his head and the line of his mouth make him seem forlorn and so I tilt his head up for a long kiss. 

“Will you see Liam tomorrow?”

“No, I don’t think so. I plan to let him stew for a day or so.”

“Could you tell me before you go to see him?”

“If you like.”

“He won’t talk. Liam hates you more than anyone.”

“Yes, I’d noticed that. Although I can’t say I know what I’ve done to be marked out for favour in this way.”

Shay just shakes his head, seeming struck dumb with the weight of all the things he can’t tell me. All the signs of agitation he’s shown remind me of something I’ve kept at the back of my mind.

“Shay, when is your next heat due?”

“Not sure. Why?”

“I’d like to be sure you’re either safe here or at the Homestead throughout. When was your last one?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

I frown slightly.

“More than one month?”

“More than two.”

“More than two?! Could you be pregnant?”

“No. It happens. They’re light anyway and sometimes they’re late or I miss them if…”

“If you’re upset or receive a great shock. I see.”

He nods, looking up at me, his gaze searching.

“How did you know?”

This again. I’m perpetually astonished by this widespread ignorance about how our bodies work and I know my physician, John Meadows, finds it exasperating.

“It’s not unusual. Although missing two consecutive months is. Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

“I haven’t… been with Liam for over three months, almost four.”

Two missed heats… This hides something too. After four months apart it’s unlikely O’Brien will have kept track of when Shay’s next heat is due - if he ever bothered doing it. That omegas in heat have no control over their actions or words is another of those absurd, pervasive myths that I have no doubt both O’Brien and Davenport subscribe to so they will believe that I will use Shay’s next heat to force him to tell me whatever secret it is he’s keeping. If Shay insists on leaving, it may not be as easy as I’d thought to explain away his detention in a way that doesn’t put him in danger.

I realise Shay’s been watching me closely, clearly trying to read my expression.

“Do you mind? Not being the first?”

“I don’t mind.”

“I heard… that alphas usually prefer…”

I press slow kisses onto his forehead, his brow, the bridge of his nose then his mouth.

“I don’t mind.”

Shay lets his head fall back against my shoulder, revealing the long line of his throat and looking so vulnerable. When I kiss him he responds and splays a hand onto my chest.

“I don’t mind. But I don’t like the thought of you going back to him.”

Ah, this upsets him.

“I can’t stay.”

“Well, you can stay a day or two longer, hmm?”

He nods, shivering as I brush my lips over the curve of his jaw before resting them lightly against his, mingling my breath with his.

“Do you want…?”

“I do. I’d like to lick my way down your spine again, if I may, Shay.”

He presses his lips against mine a moment then carefully rolls over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been put to me in the comments that Haytham should give Liam what's been coming to him.  
> Now, no such scene exists in my outlines but having considered it, I think one could be added without substantially changing the plot but only if it's an unequivocally non-con scene.  
> Still sorting out the particulars in my head and it wouldn't come up for a few scenes yet but if you feel strongly one way or the other, please leave a comment.


	10. Shay | Fata Morgana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking in the night, Shay remembers the circumstances that have lead him to the situation he’s in and all the other things that keep him awake.  
> (My summaries are comically bad, I know)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings:  
> Angst? The "hurt" part of "hurt/comfort"?  
> Tagging and warnings have a bit of a learning curve. If you ever feel I've missed one, let me know in comments and I'll edit. Thanks!

* * *

_The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage._

\- Jack London -

* * *

  **SHAY**

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

_Am I awake? Or just dreaming?_

It’s so dark that for a while I can’t tell if I really opened my eyes or not.

It must be late. Or very early. All the candles are out, the fire’s low but it’s still going and I can just about make out the room by the light of the two oil lamps. Exactly as I remember it and very real.

Master Kenway is real too. All wrapped around me, warm and strong and solid. My back to his chest, I can feel his skin against mine the entire length of my body, the weight of an arm thrown over my hip, while my head is pillowed on the other and tucked under his chin so that his breath tickles my ear.

He did just what he said he would and after putting a line of wet kisses down my back he settled next to me and fell asleep.

Tucked up close against him, safe and steady, but not tight, I could move if I wanted to. Maybe I should, even propped up between Master Kenway and the pillow my chest still hurts - most of my other aches and pains seem to have gone though. But I don’t want to wake him and I’m… comfortable.

I still have a lot to do. I lied to Liam. I don’t know how it stayed with me through it all but I still had the manuscript when I woke. My first thought was to burn it, since drowning it didn’t work. But I wasn’t strong enough to get out of bed and walk the three steps to the fireplace and I couldn’t trust anyone else to do it, didn’t want anyone to see it. And as I looked through its pictures of queer flowering plants, of almost familiar animals, strange diagrams with suns and stars and crowns and swords all at once, its strange writing set out in lines and circles and flowing around drawings, none of it, _none of it_ made _any_ sense but at the same time I felt that at any moment it would suddenly become completely and perfectly clear.

There was one circular diagram I thought must be some kind of astrolabe and I looked at it every way up, trying to find the key to it, the _one_ tiny missing thing, and I never felt so frustrated at being so stupid and ignorant.

And I knew then that I couldn’t destroy it.

Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s not important and there are other smarter people who might understand it - like Master Franklin. Maybe some of those circular charts do show where the Temples are. But maybe those pages covered in stars are sky charts for places that are difficult to get to or constellations we’ve never seen. And what if some of those plants cure plagues?

When I was strong enough to leave the village I came to New York and hid the manuscript and myself. I thought when I was stronger I could take the manuscript away somewhere and keep it safe until I decided what to do with it. But I just got colder and hungrier and wearier and by the time Liam and the others found me I could barely stand.

Once, I nearly told Liam where the manuscript was. I was so cold I couldn’t feel most of my body and every slow thud of my heart seemed to drain all my life-force until I felt like my cheeks and eye sockets and lungs were caving in and I was so tired of still existing that I nearly told him. Only he went too far, saying when we got back to the homestead they would listen to what I had to say and discuss it, and it reminded me of all those poor people in Lisbon and in Port-au-Prince whose lives were wrecked because people like Achilles and Liam and Mackandal never change their minds.

I’ll still have to do that - somehow get back to the manuscript and take it away from here - and as I think about it I can feel my mind slowing, closing.

Can barely keep my eyes open, my eyelids are so heavy - actually my whole body feels heavy, it just wants to slip back into sleep but I want to stay awake a bit longer and enjoy feeling warm and safe. Master Kenway’s skin is smooth and warm under my cheek and he even smells warm and rich, of musk and pine and vetiver and faintly of sweat and cigar smoke. And sex. I guess I do too.

Even dreaming, even dead, I couldn’t mistake this place for the _Morrigan_ or this man beside me for Liam.

_Liam_.

I shift at the sharp pain in my chest and Master Kenway’s hold tightens a moment.

Even with the sheets half thrown back and the fire giving off nothing but a trail of wood-smoke, it’s warm, _I’m_ warm, and I think - aye, just now I can’t feel the chill in my bones I’ve had since… November.

_No use thinking about that now._

But aside from the Master Kenway’s breathing there’s nothing. If it weren’t for his breathing I’d feel dead. I’ve never been in a place this quiet. Dull quiet - no birds, no footsteps, no voices, even the sounds of the house settlin’ are muffled like the whole house and each room is wrapped in thick cotton wool. The _Morrigan_ is always full of noise - the men, the wind, the sea, and the _Morrigan_ herself, of course. The low creak and strain of her timbers beneath the waterline, the dull crack of the stuns’ls as they fill in brisk breeze, the taut hum of the shrouds when storm winds shriek through them, and the short rumble of the guns in the cabin where I sleep as they trundle forward an inch and then back again with each roll of the ship. I love everythin’ about her.

I miss her. I miss being home. I can feel my heart in my chest screaming for somewhere to go home to. The homestead, the Morrigan, even New York, the city where I was born, they’re all lost to me - when I leave I’ll be leaving them forever.

I’m all at sea and adrift again, just as I was after my father died. When he was alive I sailed with him from port to port and when he died I had nowhere to go. Then Liam found me and he and Achilles became the two headlands I sailed by. Now all gone. Like sailing in sight of land your whole life, always along a coastline as familiar to you as the back of your hand. Then waking up one morning to find the whole continent just _gone_ \- destroyed by an earthquake - like it never existed while everything else under the sky is still in its proper place. You can still tell North by the stars and the sun’s position as it moves from East to West and you know all the other continents are still out there but you’ve lost all sense of your place in the world.

Aye, adrift in a storm with no destination.

Here in Master Kenway’s house the waves and rain don’t batter me but I can’t stay. Liam might tell him something about me if he’s desperate and besides, Master Kenway suspects I know about the precursor artefacts. And I can’t - I can’t face seeing him disappointed or angry with me too.

He shifts, drawing me and the pillow I’m hugging a little closer. His mouth brushes against my ear as he nuzzles my hair then his hold loosens and we settle against each other again, his Templar ring catching the light.

Carefully, very carefully, I reach out to touch the ring then his palm with the tip of my finger. I remember the feel of his strong, warm hands on me and that of the cool, hard ring - a slight ridge against my flesh.

Maybe the continent never existed at all. Maybe it was just one of those mirages - what did they call them in Sicily? A _Fata Morgana_. Liam and I saw a few of those north of Anticosti - some of them looked like ships, others like land, and were never anything at all in the end.

What’s left of the Creed for me now that I’ve killed innocents?

Now it seems that the villainous Grand Master Liam and Achilles told me about is a mirage too and it faded as soon as I touched it. Master Kenway hasn’t changed any more than Liam and Achilles have. There is darkness in him, aye, and violence and maybe even cruelty but I look at Master Kenway and I can’t see _anything_ of the cold, selfish, greedy monster that Achilles and Liam described. How could they have been so wrong. Were they wrong? Were they just as blinded by the prejudice that they passed on to me or… or did they just settle for a convenient lie?

A ripple of movement, a slight pressure against my hair, near my ear, and the present comes back to me in a flood.

I’ve woken Master Kenway.

“Go back to sleep, hawkling. You need rest.”

His voice is low and heavy with sleep and all I want to do is put my mouth against his throat. As soon as I start to roll over he helps me, propping the pillow behind my back, and there’s a chuckle in his voice when he speaks.

“What is it, Shay?”

“I’m… warm.”

“Finally! I hope you appreciate all the trouble I go to for the sake of your comfort.”

“Aye, but…”

I want him so much I think my heart will stop. I need him more than anything because when he’s inside me I can think of nothing else.

“Mmm…?”

“I’m still wet.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fata Morgana - type of mirage named for Morgan le Fay, “that silly fairy queen who ruined Merlin the wise”.


	11. Haytham | Things He Enjoys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shay (still) can’t sleep so he and Haytham indulge in (more) sex and some pillow talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No particular warnings. I know these early chapters move really slowly but I promise they're important for setup. 
> 
> Thank you for all the lovely comments!

**HAYTHAM**

 

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

_How did this happen?_

One moment I’m just surfacing from deep sleep and the next moment I’m settling between Shay’s long, lean thighs, reaching out for his pillow and tucking it under his sweet little rump before guiding myself to his entrance.

He’s right, he’s still wet, though it’s hardly surprising considering how much I’ve spent myself inside him.

As I start to push in, Shay smiles but I can see he’s just trying to look brave. I can’t bite his neck when he’s laid out beneath me like this and he seems resigned. When I brush his hair back then slip my hand against the back of his neck and squeeze firmly he closes his eyes a moment before looking up at me, melting with relief and gratitude. A quick kiss before I ease into him and start to roll my hips steadily, shallow and slow, luxuriating in his wet heat and the feel of his legs wrapped high around me.

We both know he won’t come from this but I can just make out enough of Shay’s gentle smile of encouragement to know that he doesn’t mind. I expect he’s been keeping tally and decided I’m one orgasm behind. I wish he wouldn’t worry so much about me but this is not the time to say so. And he’s enjoying it, in a different way, his gaze fixed on me, breathing to the rhythm of my thrusts.

I barely bite back a growl when he suddenly tightens around me on the out-stroke, nearly squeezing me into a premature climax and it takes me a moment to catch my breath again.

“Something else you enjoy?”

I try to sound flippant but he’s not fooled for a moment, looking very pleased with himself as I sink back in a little deeper and slower, leaning my forearms on either side of him.

“Aye. Sir.”

The next time I draw out of the fierce clutch of his body I can’t help a low groan that makes Shay bite his lip. I lean in to bite it after him and feel him wind his fingers into my hair, thinking to myself that if Davenport and O’Brien had had the imagination to send Shay to assassinate me I would have died a score of times over by now.

“What a wonderful memory you have, hawkling.”

“I… remembered something else I enjoy. May I?”

“I hereby grant you, absolutely and in perpetuity, leave to do anything you want to me, Shay.”

A short laugh then he bites my lip, unlocks his ankles and slides a heel down over my backside to tuck it firmly behind my knot, pushing at each of my in-strokes. The slow, deep pleasure of it, the alternating pressure and squeeze, are exquisite agony and judging by Shay’s heated, self-satisfied look, he knows it.

He works me into a sweat of self-control and slow-building pleasure then topples me by leaning up and biting my mouth and I feel a tremor run through him as I start to spend myself inside him.

_Ah, he likes that._

Sure enough, he gasps softly with each release and this time doesn’t pull away, instead locking his ankles in the small of my back more securely as I settle onto him carefully, pressing kisses onto his face.

_He’s learning._

“Thank you, Shay. Next time I’ll -.”

“No, I… You’re so good to me… I keep feeling I should be paying _you_.”

“That’s the second time you’ve likened this place to a brothel, Shay. Any moreand I might start to take it personally.”

I chuckle as he fastens his mouth onto my throat again.

“Are you all right?”

“Aye. Thank you.”

“When did you go to Havana? Your experience there seems to have been very thorough.”

He stifles a yawn and wriggles slightly to make himself comfortable and settles against me.

“A few times. It was one of our regular routes. I must’ve gone there twenty times with my father.”

He tells me of a childhood spent aboard his father’s merchant ship - a hybrid creature just as likely to spend time carving scrimshaw with the coarse foremast jacks or perched on a yardarm with a spyglass or on deck being taught to fight with pistol and sword, as he was to spent time in his father’s cabin studying velocity and spherical trigonometry. A quiet, almost distant, but kind father - almost certainly an alpha, though Shay never mentions it - strict with the men but never tyrannical, a kind of benevolent sun shining down on a demanding, even dangerous, but happy childhood. Long voyages to exotic ports, a culturally diverse crew, the freedom and indulgences of youth and all the advantages and privileges that came with being the captain’s son. The hardships of life at sea, attacks by pirates, then one of those terrible storms, so common in that part of the Caribbean, that forces the ship to stay in Havana for a fortnight while the worst of the damage is repaired. Shay sent away to the Rosa del Sur, ostensibly because he was ill during the voyage, then a return trip and another storm that this time robs him of his father.

These memories should be upsetting for him and yet he’s far more settled now than he was in the last few hours when he should have been sleeping.

He paints a picture of an alpha father who had to raise his only son without the advice and support a wife and mother would have provided. Who, with the help of a crew of other men, raised him to become a sea captain just like him - like an _alpha_ \- and must have been blindsided when Shay presented, rather late at fifteen, as an omega. A father who had never remarried or even looked at another woman since the early death of his beloved wife and who, having no female acquaintances he could entrust Shay to, took him to the Rosa del Sur, one of the concerns of a wealthy local landowner and business associate of his, thinking that Shay would be safe among women, which he was, but perhaps not realising that the girls would debauch his son, whose omeghood was not clear even to himself, as thoroughly as they would have any other young man who was recommended into their care by the owner of their establishment. Shay, so handsome, so sweet-tempered, so eager to please and be pleased, must have been a delight.

It all explains so much of why he is the way he is.

I had a similar experience - before the second, less pleasant part when I was made to endure - and my memory of it too is haloed in happiness. Everything is pleasure and games and pure, before you learn that there can be pain too and that pleasure can be feigned.

“I don’t think I ever slept alone the whole time I was there. For two weeks I just ate and slept and had sex and played games whenever I wanted. It was heaven. The happiest time of my life. Maybe the last time I was completely happy. I only had one other real talk with my father, when we left, when he told me I was an omega and to keep myself safe during my heats. He died just days later.”

Well, perhaps the fact that he’s reminded of the Rose when he’s here isn’t all bad.

“Sounds like it suited you.”

“They’re a lot freer there.”

“I expect they are. I’ve only lived in this house a couple of weeks but I can’t tell you how glad I am to finally be settled in New York.”

“Where were you before, sir?”

“Mostly Boston.”

“Do you have a house there too?”

“No, I stayed in a tavern.”

“You, sir? In a tavern?”

“No need to say it like that, Shay. I’ll have you know my presence rather raised the tone of the place. I can’t say I ever felt at home there - always overdressed. New York suits me much better.”

“Boston is a bit different from New York.”

“You’re a born and bred New Yorker, Shay. Don’t you find the atmosphere in Boston - most of Massachusetts, in fact - a little stifling? Puritanical?”

“Aye. I’d never really thought about it but you’re right. I guess that’s why Liam never liked me, ah… bein’ so free with the lasses.”

Ah, of course. O’Brien’s people are from Massachusetts, he was born there - no wonder he shares Achilles’ constrained sense of virtue. Quite the puritanical type, which is why I’m still astonished at Shay being his choice of mate. I’d imagined - well, no, I’d never imagined any aspect of Liam O’Brien’s private life, but I suppose I’d assumed he would want a more traditional family life - a wife and mother, a large brood. Particularly after Achilles’ family was so tragically taken from him. Shay is charming but hardly a conventional choice.

“That’s exactly the sort of thing I mean. As though there were some universal law.”

“Isn’t there? I’m an omega, shouldn’t I prefer men?”

“Why should you? Every culture is different. In some societies, omegas can choose whether they want to live as male or female and marry accordingly. Other societies don’t have marriage at all and so omegas can have two, three sets of children with different partners, male or female. Even here in the colonies, the Mohawk clans are matriarchal, with social power resting in the hands of their women and omegas, their brothers have a more important role in raising children than the fathers do. Meanwhile, the Abenaki tribes are more like us, with everything passes through the father and they can be fiercely jealous of their partners.”

I roll my hips slightly and he gasps, tightening his hold on me.

“Like you?”

“I said I was possessive. I’m not sexually jealous as a rule. Should you have liked to live as a beta, Shay?”

Startled, his eyes widen.

“I… I’d never thought about it. I do like women.”

“So I’d gathered.”

He kisses my throat as I laugh quietly and his legs tighten around me.

One paid companion I spent time with in Boston once confessed, while under the influence of a little too much wine, that I have a reputation for being a ‘technical lover’. Not exactly a toe-curling description but I suppose there’s truth to it and it’s also the reason I never lack for such companions when I want them. I enjoy pleasure but I don’t usually enjoy physical intimacy and loss of control - the demands I make on my partners are always reasonable and I’ve never injured anyone. The best sort of customer. What’s more, to avoid the scandal and inconvenience of a paternity suit, I never allow myself to ‘finish’ - as Shay would so daintily phrase it - inside my partner.

So this, with Shay, is truly an indulgence.

I can’t remember the last time I was with an omega. They’re rare and expensive, usually reserved for patrons whose tastes run to males or who are willing to pay a premium to reach completion without risking a pregnancy. Omegas, with their short, intense, easily perceptible heats, present a much lower risk.

Reginald once arranged for me to lay with an omega in heat - the most intense pleasure that can be bought for money. It was all I’d imagined and more but I’ve never repeated the experience, having learnt since then that most omegas used that way are primed, made to miss a heat or two to make the following one more intense, or learn to feign a heat, since a wet, reasonably willing omega is almost indistinguishable from one in heat. Knowing that rather took away from the experience.

But Shay…

_What is he made of? Why can’t I get enough of him?_

The thought of him is enough to send desire and _need_ rushing into my loins and as I start to move he smiles against my cheek.

This time I roll my hips harder, determined to exhaust myself - I’ve worn him out too much as it is. Shay gasps with each thrust, his hold on me tightening and I’m surprised to feel a sudden spasm shake him. Well, perhaps he really does like it a little rough.

“Shay, are you-?”

“Aye!”

“What do you need?”

“Deeper! Please!”

_Ah, of course._

I tug him lower onto the bed, pulling his legs up higher and Shay cries out in pleasure-pain as I hit the sensitive barrier inside him. Too sensitive.

“Haytham!”

Astonished and delighted, I snap my hips into him harder, making him gasp.

“Again. Say it again.”

I make him repeat my name over and over, with every roll of my hips, until I cover his mouth with mine.

“Haytham, I can’t-!”

“No, wait for me this time, Shay.”

He bites my shoulder and when I reach down to squeeze the base of his pouch he shudders in relief, dropping back against the pillow. I rest my forehead against his, trying to catch up to him but all too soon he’s straining in my arms again, making small keening sounds. He won’t last much longer, but then neither will I.

“A little longer, Shay. A little longer. Not yet. Wait.”

I’m drenched in sweat from holding back and the hard pressure of his heel against me. Cradling his head in my hands, I force him to look at me, leaning in to kiss away his tears.

“Now, Shay. Come for me now.”

I drink up his cry of relief, emptying myself inside him, thrust after thrust, straining through the burn in the muscles of my lower back.

Mouthing and sucking the sweat from his face and neck, I wait until I can withdraw from him, settle onto my side and draw his weak, quivering body against mine.

“I’m sorry, Shay. I pushed you too far.”

He shakes his head weakly and leans into me, falling away into sleep as I stroke his hair.

Well, it should help him sleep at least.


	12. Haytham | Indulgences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By dawn, Shay has given up fighting his feelings for Haytham, but Haytham is starting to wonder how to reign in his feelings for Shay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No particular warnings (not after the previous chapters). 
> 
> Thank you again for all the comments and kudos! Enjoy!

**HAYTHAM**

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

I wake before dawn, as is my custom, to Shay’s unfamiliar but pleasant presence beside me. Closing my eyes again, I savour the smell of his hair, his weight against me and the feel of his skin under the pads of my fingers.

As my eyes adjust to the gloom they pick out the scattered remains of our ardour - the towelling robe trailing on the floor and my own many articles of clothing adrift on the sea of pillows and blankets that litter the floor.

Nuzzling Shay’s hair, I debate whether to wake him. Perfectly still and breathing evenly, after hours of restlessness he finally seems peaceful. I don’t want to disturb his much-needed rest but neither do I want him to wake alone. I worked all night to secure his trust and I don’t want all my work undone by a mistaken first impression in the cold light of morning while his mind is still foggy.

Shay stirs slightly, as though sensing I’m awake. Sure enough he soon shifts his weight and I lean onto one elbow as he turns slightly until he can look up at me.

Smiling, I nudge his nose gently and a thrill of satisfaction runs through me as I feel all the fullness of the night’s intimacy still in the deep, slow kiss we share.

“Did you sleep well, hawkling?”

“Never better, thank you. That thing you do to get me to sleep works very well.”

I can’t help laughing as I smother him with kisses.

Awake and alert in an instant, just as one would expect from a trained assassin.

I light a candle so I can look at him and he returns my gaze steadily, smiling faintly, and those heavy lids render his expression impossibly amorous.

As I lay back down against my pillow, Shay stretches an arm over me, his eyes warm as he runs his palm over my chest out to the breadth of my shoulders, touching his lips to my skin. I’m not as big as Liam O’Brien who is both taller and broader than I am but even though I’m about Shay’s height and despite his being in excellent shape, I likely could overpower him. He’s exploring my body again, tracing the scars and marks he finds with his lips and fingertips, reading the truth of me carved into my skin.

We’re still discovering each other, Shay and I, undressing each other one item at the time, without violence and without threat and without haste. He’s far from stripping me bare - and I suspect I still have much to discover about him - but he’s removed enough of the bulky top layers to have an idea of what my real contours might be like. It hasn’t all been pleasant, I know my initial offer upset him, as did my threats against O’Brien, but they did not come as a surprise and I think my hard muscles and the battle-scarred skin that covers them are what shocked him the most - the realisation that he was out-classed coming far too late. Would he have agreed to my proposition if he’d known? Had he banked on being able to overpower, outmanoeuvre or at least outrun me?

Whatever insecurities he may have felt, they’re not on his mind now. Now he’s happy and eyes me the way he did his buttered bread rolls yesterday.

“Will I be expected to help you go to sleep every night now?”

“Only if you’re up for it. Wouldn’t want to tire ya.”

“ _You_ tire _me_?!”

I try to moderate my complacent hilarity at this suggestion and Shay props himself up as he runs his wide-eyed, speculative gaze over me.

“Could you…?”

He shifts gingerly to verify the answer for himself.

“I could but we won’t.”

“But you want to? I mean…”

“I do but we won’t all the same. Not now. Go back to sleep, hawkling. It’s still early. I’ll wake you for breakfast.”

“Where are you going?”

“I want to get some work done before breakfast. I didn’t mean to wake you, I just didn’t want you to wake up alone and get the wrong idea.”

Shay’s long fingers are twined in my hair and though he says nothing he seems disinclined to go back to sleep so I draw him closer.

“I suppose I can spare a moment and stay until you fall asleep.”

“Thought you said you wouldn’t be busy for a few days.”

I chuckle into his hair.

“Are you accusing me of bringing you here under false pretences?”

“The thought had occurred.”

Shay is so quick at reading shifts in my mood, he seems to have an instinct for knowing when to submit and when to resist. As I stroke his hair, I look him over closely, looking for signs of the terrible cold I’d expected him to wake with, but aside from his dark bruises and some lingering signs of tiredness nothing looks amiss. He must be extraordinarily resilient. All the same, I have every intention of keeping him warm and fed and I’ll arrange for my physician to visit - if nothing else, that bullet must still come out.

“How do you feel, Shay?”

“Fine. But I’m not sleepy at all. Maybe … if you did that thing…”

With this I’ve quite lost my head over him.

“And what would that be exactly, Shay?”

Such impossibly gentle longing in the velvety eyes and by way of answer I feel his mouth on my throat, warm and moist, the firm lips seeking every sensitive spot.

Despite my resolutions, I lay back and indulge in this pleasure, but Shay soon moves down along my throat to my chest and when he glances up at me his intention is perfectly clear.

I hesitate a moment too long and Shay continues downward, disappearing under the sheets. As I close my eyes at the slither of his cool, silky hair over my skin, I wonder if this can be more than a dream, if one can really wake up to such bliss. He’s even more thorough than he was last night when I watched him so closely that I can now perfectly conjure up in my mind how he looked as he ran the rough flat of his tongue slowly along the underside of my length, the way it folds when he swirls it up against the flare of my head, the tip of it pressed hard in that place just above my knot. And the slight compression of his lips as he sucks the tip and the ludicrous way they pinken as they stretch over my girth to - _my god but he’s talented!_

One of his hands slips out from under the sheets, splayed over my chest, and when I stroke his fingers he immediately twines them around mine, finally gripping them tightly as he swallows me down, slow and deep, then the tips of two fingers pressed firmly behind my knot, pushing me over.

Shay soon reemerges, looking very pleased with himself, and when I slip two fingers into his mouth, onto his tongue, he sucks on them obligingly, watching me, until I pull him down for a deep, open-mouthed kiss.

I nip his ear, smiling, then pull away to look at him and brush his hair out of his face.

“Shay, I might understand your putting your talents to such good use now but why did you take so much trouble with me yesterday? Surely you knew I didn’t expect that much.”

For a moment Shay seems to cast his mind back, looking puzzled, then his face takes on a comical sheepishness.

“Oh, well, Liam doesn’t usually ask for… more than once a night so if I can, ah… satisfy him that way he doesn’t ask for more… I thought you might be the same.”

“I see. I must have been a sad disappointment to you, Shay. I am sorry.”

Shay grins and kisses me again, almost demanding, while I lay my hands onto the small of his back, spanning its deep curve.

Interesting. I may have underestimated O’Brien. Perhaps he’s less exalted than I thought and does understand something about Man’s baser instincts.

“I don’t think it would ever be enough to satisfy me. On the contrary…”

“Ah, well, Liam doesn’t really like it. He indulges me.”

No. I will never understand Liam O’Brien.

“Speaking of indulging you, Shay…”

Shay is already trembling in happy anticipation as I take my turn disappearing under the sheets.

That talk of O’Brien _indulging_ Shay by allowing himself to be serviced in this way is ludicrous. For having done it myself, I know the _entirety_ of the enjoyment to be derived in performing this little attention comes from knowing of and watching one’s partner’s pleasure in it. Otherwise it’s a fairly thankless task.

Settled between Shay’s thighs again, running my palms over his loins to feel the firm, shallow contours of his muscles, I can’t help a deep hum of admiration and contentment. Memory cannot do justice to the sweet perfection of his parts, so innocuous in their pert, taut neatness, promising to be smooth, firm and velvet-soft on the tongue. No surprise he was such a favourite at the Rosa del Sur.

After pressing my warm mouth onto his navel and my tongue into it, I press a line of kisses downward until my mouth is on him. An instant gasp then another as I run the nail of my thumb along the underside of his shaft while swirling my tongue onto its side then its base, drawing his tight pouch into my mouth to suck sharply on it. He’s the perfect size, a comfortable fullness. When I start to lick him again, I press my palm against his sack then gently push a finger into him - even like this, I want him to associate the pleasure I give him with possession.

Shay, still absurdly sensitive, is shaking long before I take his length into my mouth and when I too slip my free hand out of the sheets he immediately squeezes it and I draw it down, pressing his fingertips against my throat just before I swallow him down entirely, and when he feels his bulge travel beneath his fingers he instantly comes in my throat.

After disengaging myself, I move a little higher on him, resting my upper arms over his loins and pressing a quick kiss onto his navel, watching him arch his back slightly as I slip my hands beneath him.

He looks utterly spent.

“You _are_ becoming spoilt, Shay. Do they teach all Assassin trainees to take advantage of Templar Grand Masters like this?”

“No, I… must have a natural talent for it.”

“Indeed.”

Another kiss, this one a few inches beneath his navel and his stomach dips as he draws in a sharp, shaky breath.

Crossing my arms over his pelvis, I rest my head on them and soon feel Shay’s fingers twine in my hair, his breathing slowing, steadying, as he falls asleep again.

I don’t like it.

I don’t mind seeing to his needs - on the contrary - but I distrust the fact that he can’t seem to sleep unless I wear him out with pleasure and then can’t stay asleep for more than an hour before he becomes restless again. He’s not afraid of me, not anymore, his anxiety no longer stems from having to rely on my goodwill for his safety and eventual freedom.

He is, however, keeping some important information from me. He may be worried that I will try to force a confidence from him or perhaps that Achilles will believe he has already revealed it to me - quite likely - or it may be that this great secret does concern me and he’s worn out from being forced to deceive me.

I can’t press him for more than he’s already told me - I promised I wouldn’t and besides, unless he tells it all it may just make things worse. No, I can’t force him, but we can’t go on like this either - the more his anxiety grows, the more intense he needs his pleasure to be and he’ll soon be worn to a shadow by the double burden of sleeplessness and physical exhaustion.

And all this is utter madness. Madness to trust an assassin this far, to allow him this close, and madness to allow my feelings to tumble out of control like this. I don’t believe Shay was sent as a spy, I don’t even think he would reveal anything of what he’s learnt here were I to release him, but even so it is madness to keep near me a being who creates a weakness in me.

Even with Ziio it was never like this, she did not make me weak, she never made me blind to my duty, she never so ensnared my senses that they drowned out reason. Ours was a partnership. _This_ is a kind of enslavement and the only reason I’ve managed to keep my head above water is because the weight of it seems to hang even heavier on Shay.

I chose not to kill Braddock and Ziio left me because of it, each of us free in our actions. But Shay… what would I do if he asked me to spare O’Brien? Why hasn’t he asked? I decided not to kill O’Brien before I ever touched Shay but now I can no longer see,through the fog in my mind, whether my reluctance to upset Shay weighed on that decision.

I need to spend some time working in my study to clear my head.

After a last kiss against his skin, I carefully slip out of bed.

 


	13. Shay | One More Taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poor Shay’s mind continues to crack under the strain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No particular warnings. Well, angst and hurt, possibly.

* * *

_Quand on ne trouve pas son repos en soi-même,_

_Il est inutile de le chercher ailleurs._

\- François de la Rochefoucauld -

* * *

 

**SHAY**

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

Master Kenway slips out of bed then tucks the blankets up around me and I lay there, heavy and tired, pretending to sleep, watching him light a few more candles, pick up the shirts, pillows, blankets off the floor and toss them onto the armchairs, and throw a couple of small bits of timber onto the fire before disappearing into his dressing room.

He soon comes back with a washbasin and cloth and I close my eyes and pretend to sleep again while he wipes down my face, neck and shoulders gently.

Then he disappears again and returns, still naked, and stands near the fireplace where an invisible fire has started to crackle, drying himself.

He’s perfect.

His body is full of shadows in the low light but my memories of it are so clear I can feel and taste and smell the skin warmed to honey and apricots by the candlelight. Shadows shift and dance all over him as he wipes himself down with the washcloth, all his muscles moving so smoothly, so obviously strong, so obviously powerful, so obviously an _alpha_.

At first I thought him a bit stiff but it’s just his manner. He moves exactly the way he wants to, except for that very slight limp he has because of a wound to his side, low on his hip. A deep stab wound that must’ve nearly killed him. I saw the scar, I remember the feel of it - puckered under my fingertips but smooth against my lips.

The memory of it is so strong it’s like a taste on my tongue, like having that whisky poured into my mouth until it overflows and spills down my throat and along my neck, a tingling stream over my skin, _glacial_ as my blood flares up with - Desire? Shame? Madness? Last night was madness but even if I doubted my memory of it, Master Kenway’s behaviour makes it clear that it _did_ happen. His lips must know the feel of my skin and my scars as well as mine know his.

He goes back and forth between here and his dressing room as he gets ready and it's like watching him put on a disguise - a simpler one than yesterday’s, but still a disguise. His clothes are so well-cut, they show him off - his breeches so snug around his hips and waist, the cling of his shirt at his shoulders - but they also hide him. They smooth over the muscles and cover up the scars, like blurring everything physical about him, leaving just the master of this house, the wealthy aristocrat, the Grand Master, all silks and fine cottons. I can hardly see anything left of the man I spent the night with, who was all passion and fire. It’s still there in that mouth that knows the taste of me, in his quick fingers as he dresses himself even though a man like him shouldn’t even know which way on a shirt goes, and in the way he runs his gaze over me like he can’t decide if he wants to kiss me or bite me or just fuck me all over again. 

When he’s dressed and ready he comes over to kneel by the bed and I shift closer to him as he buries a hand in my hair before leaning over to press his lips against my temple, his breath ghosting over my skin and into my hair, so close over me that I’m in the dark like my eyes are closed but the smell of him and the barely-there sound of his clothes and the feel of his skin, of his breath, of his lips on me are so sharp and bright we could be under the hot Havana sun.

I don’t want him to to leave me.

Even when he’s touching me I can barely believe he’s really there - or that I’m really here, or that any of this is real. I kill people like him, I have killed people like him. Templars. Maybe he’s not real, just the ghost of one of the people I killed without knowing them - a Lawrence Washington, a Samuel Smith, a James Wardrop, a Haytham Kenway.

Finally, a soft sigh that drifts past my ear and the curve of my jaw to fade along my neck.

“Here, have some water, Shay.”

Didn’t think I was thirsty but when I’ve finished the glass of cool water I feel better.

“Go back to sleep, hawkling, you need rest.”

I don’t dare ask him to stay. I don’t want him to think I’m weak or a nuisance.

“One more taste before I go, hmm?”

Master Kenway nudges my nose with his until he can press his mouth onto mine, deep but gentle, so gentle, like he knows I don’t want to be alone, that I can’t feel warm without his body near mine, that nothing calms me like his heartbeat and his breathing, like he’s trying to fill me up for the time he’ll spend away.

“There, rest now, Shay. You know you’re safe here, don’t you?”

“Aye.”

“Good. I won’t be too long.”

And a moment later he’s gone, having blown out all the candles. I can barely see a thing but I still… I don’t want to close my eyes but I’m tired and finally I have to close them and I listen and smell and feel so that I won’t forget where I am and where I’m not, and for a while it works.

I’ve never felt so safe, wrapped up and tucked away like a precious thing, in a cocoon of silks and soft wools. Even the air smells expensive, the pine needle smell of Master Kenway’s bathwater made richer by a smudge of candle-smoke.

Expensive and familiar - pine and candle smoke. Whenever we have an open fire Liam throws pinecones or pine branches onto it because he knows I like the smell. He’d never let me do it at home because the sap and oils are hard to clean up. I always got it all over my fingers, the sap especially, sticky and eye-wateringly bitter.

_Liam_.

He’s safe, at least for now, Master Kenway promised he would be. I’m glad but it’s a relief that makes my whole body shrink until I feel nothing but my heart, acutely small and tight, like a stone thrown into my chest.

I still love him.

All my life, Liam has been there. His mother used to tell me how he would rub my mother’s stomach and talk to me, waiting for me, waiting for the little brother or sister he’d always wanted. He loved me before I was even born. He would have loved me no matter how I turned out.

And all my life, I thought that maybe, probably, Liam loved me more than I loved him. I’m so much more difficult to love than he is, it must have taken more effort. But he managed it and we’ve loved each other all our lives - like friends and brothers, like two people who didn’t always think the same but always understood how the other thought. I missed Liam while I was away with my father and I missed him when I wandered around New York after my father died, wondering where he was and if he still sometimes thought of me, and then he found me and everything between us was just as before, as if we’d never been apart. I loved him as much as I _can_ love, more than I’ve ever loved anyone else and I thought that was enough. When he asked me to go to the homestead with him as his intended I thought that was just the new shape of our old bond - we were always pretend brothers, I thought it would be more of the same only more grownup.

Liam had told me what happened with his father and as soon as I got to the homestead I saw and understood the relationship between him and Achilles and later I saw that their ties are even stronger than between father and son because they built the Brotherhood together. I know it’s been hard for Liam, being caught in the middle when it’s obvious Achilles doesn’t think much of me and doesn’t approve of my being Liam’s intended or even being at the homestead. I know he’s defended me to Achilles and the others, convinced them to train me and give me tasks, done everything he could to make my life at the homestead less frustrating.

And I did everything I could to make it easier for him. I did everything I could not to be an obstacle. I worked and trained even though they made it clear they didn’t think me worth the effort, I helped Liam on his missions whenever he asked me to even though he never explained what we were doing, I never questioned Achilles even though I didn’t always understand what we were doing and even though I knew it was because of him that I was never given responsibilities and never trusted with anything more difficult or important than ferrying supplies and messages.

I was so careful to never make Liam choose between Achilles and me.

He did choose between us in the end. In the years we were together it had occurred to me that he might have to and maybe deep down I knew that he would choose Achilles - I guess that’s why I was so careful never to force him into that choice. Aye, I guess I always knew. All the signs were there and some part of me saw them even though I didn’t want to. It’s why I was always restless, why I always wanted to prove myself to Achilles, to _earn_ my own place at the Homestead, because one day Liam might get tired of defending me to Achilles and I’d lose my place there.

But it hadn’t occurred to me that it would be so _easy_ for Liam to choose, that he wouldn’t even hesitate, that he would take Achilles’ side without knowing what the question was, that he would never even want to hear my side. It had never occurred to me that he’d made his choice long ago, probably before he even brought me to the homestead all those years ago.

_That’s_ what hurts. Realising that while I was making sacrifices and swallowing one frustration after another for the sake of _our_ future together he was building another with Achilles - one in which there was no real place for me. All those times we made plans, that time on the _Morrigan_ when he asked me to have patience and to obey orders without question so that Achilles would know to trust me, all that time when I thought our futures were becoming more entwined and more solid, he was drifting further and further away from me, was planning a different future, one in which I am completely _disposable_.

And now he’s been sent to dispose of me.

Even now, I know the truth of Liam. I know he’s loyal, intelligent, resourceful and disciplined. And if Achilles were a more deserving leader I would understand Liam’s devotion. But I see nothing so worthy in Achilles - especially now. I cannot respect or admire or even like him and I cannot even give him the benefit of the doubt. I can’t forgive him for not knowing - or _pretending_ not to know - when he should have known, for sacrificing the lives of all those people for his own gain, for risking me the way Mackandal risked his man, and for not risking Liam with me. I am angry with Achilles and my anger is like a burning cold thing, strong with the anger of all those who are no longer alive to be angry, it is a constant heavy weight on my chest, a numb dizzying blackness.

But Liam… I want to be angry with him but I can’t, not for long. I was seething earlier when we were in the cells and he insulted me with more lies and empty promises, I was blind with rage when he first restrained me after instantly siding with Achilles against me, and one night in New York after my fall I cried tears of anguish at his deception and betrayal. But it never lasts. I’m just not built to be angry with Liam. I wish I could be, it would be easier - my simple hate of Achilles is easy and I can feel it weakening and settling a little more each day. But Liam… no, that isn’t anger - it’s loss, it’s yearning, it’s abandonment, it’s a silent cry that empties my lungs and hollows out my entire body with the pain of it until every last nerve throbs and screams.

I will miss him until I die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last of the short, introspective night scenes. Thanks for sticking with me through them!


	14. Haytham | A Fresh Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trying to get back into his stride, Haytham bends his mind back to the present and starts planning for he near future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to mention in the last post that I'm away on holiday until next week so updates will be a bit patchy.  
> Also, I'm finding it impossible to write convincingly about snow while still suffering through this infernal heatwave... Apparently my imagination only stretches so far. 
> 
> No particular warnings here, the tension gets reset a little in the next couple of chapters. 
> 
> Sorry for the delay, thank you for the comments and enjoy!

**HAYTHAM**

  
_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

  
Pulling on my banyan, a reworked Japanese kimono lined with mohair to ward off the chill, I make my way down and through the house, all its airy halls and rooms already flooded with daylight despite the season and the early hour.  
Going through to the already unshuttered French windows in my study I can’t help smiling at the sight.  
Yesterday’s blizzard has given way to that glorious sunshine that only comes with the most crisp of winter days, the blaze of it reflected off more than two feet of snow that have blanketed everything in sight, reducing the gardens and careful landscapes to gentle sparkling hills, everything clean and bright - a fresh start.  
The last time I had to plough and stomp my way through knee-deep snow was over a year ago when I went chasing after Ziio to persuade her to help me chase after Braddock. If a messenger was sent to Achilles, it will take him at least twice as long to reach the homestead. Good, this buys me time.  
The door creaks slightly.  
“Look at that, Barrington!”  
He sets down a small tray holding my morning pot of turkish coffee and a piece of toast onto my writing desk.  
“Yes, sir, a most invigorating snowfall.”  
_Invigorating_.  
I trekked through acres of snow to find Ziio and I brought Shay back during a blizzard but I’m not sure Barrington is quite right in supposing that the sight of snow increases my ardour.  
Meanwhile, his silent disapproval is unmistakeable.  
“I trust you are well rested, sir.”  
No doubt by now he knows Shay did not make use of the guest room prepared for him and has correctly surmised that he stayed in my room instead. Thankfully, Barrington will never know what other injudicious risks I took last night.  
“Yes, thank you, most refreshed.”  
“Will anyone be joining you for breakfast?”  
“I doubt anyone will brave these snow banks just to grace my breakfast table but I think we may expect Masters Gist and Weeks at luncheon. They’ll have to delay their departure for Boston by at least a day.”  
“Yes, sir.”  
But what of Shay? Should he take his breakfast on a tray in bed and rest a few hours longer? Or would being up and about, bathed in this marvellous light help chase whatever gloom has been preying on him?  
“I take it Master Cormac will be staying. Should I have a room made up for him, sir?”  
I’m glad he asked. Of course Barrington would obey any order of mine but I’ve never really ordered him to do anything.  
Lane Barrington has been with me almost since I was orphaned - a gift, so to speak, from my late mentor, Reginald Birch, who no doubt realised that he was not cut out to hand-rear a young child. Barrington, a longtime member of the Order, has cared for me, nursed me through illness, and been my confidante and first port of call for guidance ever since, following me to every school I ever went to as valet and guardian before becoming my butler. He ensures my household reflects the prestige of my position, ensuring it is run with the efficiency and discretion I require - that is his contribution to the Order.  
Barrington knows me better than anyone, likely even better than Reginald did, and he must have taken one look at Shay and known exactly what I was about. Shay’s presence doubly falls under Lane’s purview as he’ll be responsible for Shay’s day to day care and ensuring his presence remains secret. I couldn’t keep him here without Barrington’s cooperation.  
“He will be staying, though I’m not sure how long for. And I think we can leave him where he is for now.”  
“Is that wise, sir?”  
“Perhaps not but he and I have an understanding and I’ve given him the run of the property. He may go where he pleases but I don’t want him to go outside for now - it’s cold and he might be seen.”  
“So he’s not to be watched, sir?”  
“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary, just keep an eye on him until he’s learnt his way around the house and he’s recovered.”  
“Is he very unwell, sir? He seemed in alarming condition when he arrived but seemed to rally nicely after dinner.”  
“He has a bullet lodged in his shoulder and a number of scrapes and bruises besides. I’ll ask Meadows to look in on him later. I can’t shake the feeling there’s something more, I just can’t see it. You have an eye for these things, Lane, let me know what you think when you do see him.”  
“Of course, sir.”  
A slight bow and Barrington leaves.  
My early mornings are invaluable. Ordinarily I spend them planning my day, confirming invitations and appointments and preparing for them. Nearly a whole hour to concentrate before the noise and bustle of the day begins, before most of the house is even awake. Only Barrington, Cook and her kitchenmaids, and the barest complement of staff necessary to ensure my comfort are about at this time and they know not to disturb me.  
I’d kept my schedule clear for a couple of days and given my secretary time off and now this snowfall will surely deterred any impromptu visits, which leaves me free to enjoy Shay’s company and start making plans for him.  
After a first cup of coffee and a few bites of toast, I pen my first note, which is for my particular friend, Doctor John Meadows, whom I met on the _Providence_ during my first crossing to the Colonies, begging him to dine with me after his rounds, as he often does, and for his professional opinion of my guest. I haven’t put my finger on the why yet but I’m uneasy about Shay’s health.  
I’m not sure what to do about Shay. Certainly I could and, morally, should stick to our agreement and let him go but in the cold morning light this seems less practicable than it did last night.  
Mulling over the problem, I write another note, this time to my tailor, praying him to come in the afternoon. Shay must be measured for new clothes, his having all been disposed of. I’ll lend him some of mine but our proportions are quite different so they’ll never fit him as they should and besides he’ll need some of his own.  
My impulse to care for Shay Cormac both surprises me and doesn’t.  My interest in the welfare of people is more universal than personal, more concerned with humanity than the individual. I’m considered a fair and kind master not just by my household staff but also by my subordinates in the Order and yet I don’t derive personal pleasure from it so much as an administrator’s satisfaction at seeing something running well and functioning smoothly. My concern for Shay’s welfare - his comfort, even his happiness - is something I’ve never felt before, not even with Ziio.  
And I can’t shake the feeling that though I’d intended to offer him an advantage, I have wronged him, perhaps even endangered him.  
I intend to use the fact that I have Liam O’Brien in my power against Achilles and to use the fact that I’m holding Shay against Liam O’Brien. O’Brien is hot-tempered and jealous and I as good as told him I intended to bed Shay, and I have good hopes that if I let the idea stew in his mind for a couple of days he may be led to commit an imprudence when I next speak with him. Even if Achilles agrees to my proposed truce and O’Brien goes free, will he take Shay back? What might he do to him in a fit of anger? And in the quite likely event that Achilles does not agree, O’Brien life will be forfeit and thus I will not be able to return Shay to him - or him to Shay, as the case may be.  
Further, the thought that Shay may go back to Achilles, without O’Brien’s protection and outside mine, and find himself again captured or worse… No, the mere thought of it offends me.  
Pouring out another cup of coffee and taking a new sheet of notepaper, I catch myself in a fatalistic sigh. I must make provisions for him - if he’s to turn away from his Brothers then I must give him viable alternatives. I must - want - to take responsibility for him. My protection must be complete for Achilles will always consider that if Shay isn’t with them then he’s against them.  
Sighing again, I dip the last bit of toast into my coffee to soak up the dregs - a guilty pleasure of mine - and write a quick note to Christopher Gist and Jack Weeks, permitting them to delay there departure for Boston a day or two and inviting them to lunch.  
After rounding off my correspondence by answering the few messages I didn’t bother with last night, I hand them all off Barrington for delivery as soon as practicable and make my way back to my room where I find Shay sleeping fitfully.  
Nightmares.  
I can just make out a few jumbled words. _Lisbon. Liam. Back to Morgan. I’m sorry. It’s my fault._  
I pull an armchair up to the bed and wake him gently, stroking his hair.  
“Haytham!”  
He’s fretful and doesn’t wake so I press my lips to his temple. He feels a touch too warm but it might just be the result of his agitation.  
“Shay? Wake up. You’re safe, hawkling, I’m here.”  
He startles awake and grips my sleeve tightly.  
“Easy, Shay, it’s all right. You’re safe.”  
He looks up at me, utterly stricken. There’s a desperate plea in his eyes and I know what he wants from me.  
_Oblivion_.  
Stroking his hair, I consider my options. I can give him what he wants but it is only a temporary measure and he still needs rest. But his eyes are so pleading and so full of longing and I haven’t even begun to learn how to resist him.  
A hard shiver goes through him when I kiss him and his hold on me tightens and he responds with such need and hunger. Pushing him onto his side, I draw one of his knees up, then settle by him as I slip a hand under the blankets, down between his legs and he gasps as I push a finger into him and then a second. It’s easier this time, he’s getting used to it or perhaps his body just hasn’t quite recovered from last night yet. He’s enjoying it though,his back arching, as he whimpers beneath me, his entire body tensing, seizing in pleasure as my fingers move slowly inside him, just brushing against that special place inside him. He’s still holding onto me, half trying to return my kisses, half gasping breathlessly.  
As I pick up the pace and push more deeply, he comes instantly, intensely, and I keep him there for a minute, perhaps two, then bite his mouth gently, slowly, still moving my fingers inside him deliberately, as he comes down from his high.  
I start to suck my fingers clean and Shay watches me hungrily so I let him have a taste, letting him draw both fingers into his mouth briefly before kissing him hard and deep, the taste of him passed back and forth on our tongues.  
Then I mouth his ear, hoping to settle him and cool my own ardour but Shay turns to press a hot kiss against my throat.  
“Should I…?”  
“I think I’ll take care of it myself this time, Shay.”  
He watches, tired and confused, as I settle back into the armchair and loosen my breeches to carefully draw out my stiffening member and still engorged knot. He watches with eyes dark and heavy with lust as I stroke myself and looking at him laying there with parted lips and silently panting I know I could go to him and spend myself in his mouth again. But I don’t and instead I keep my eyes on him and see his breath quicken and his strangled gasp as I come in ribbons onto my hand, my alpha seed as white and heavy as royal icing and only slightly less tacky.  
Shay watches, breathless, as I lick myself clean with a few broad strokes of my tongue and I go and kneel by him so that he can lick away the last splash of it on the side of my index.  
After quickly tidying myself up I brush back his thick hair and press a kiss onto his temple. He’s trying to keep his gaze on me but his lids keep dropping, weighed down by those long dark lashes and my misuse and overuse of him.  
“Sleep, hawkling, I’ll stay here with you.”  
He resists a moment longer but it’s a lost battle and he’s soon sound asleep, never stirring as I card his glossy hair and drop kisses onto him.  
I have just enough autonomy of thought and movement to reach for  the papers still on the secretary and I sit back in the armchair to read while Shay slumbers mere inches from me and daylight creeps in under and around the heavy drapes.  
The room is still in disarray though probably not for much longer now that the day has truly begun. I’ve seen rooms in this sort of state many times before - in far worse state, in fact - but never my own bedroom, not even back in London. There’s an intimacy and a secrecy, a voluptuousness, that I’d never known before. And Shay lying in my bed, looking so young and vulnerable in sleep, and so worn. In my mind I can see my fingerprints and handprints all over him, all the places I put my mouth to him, my skin under his nails and the taste of me still on his tongue, marked as mine in every way, even the way he sleeps, so peaceful and trusting. I like seeing him there, in my bed, in my bedroom, in my house, between my sheets, wearing nothing but my sweat on his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A banyan is a kind of long, casual over-garment men wore in the 18th century - it's also what Shay called a 'robe' for about three chapters.


	15. Haytham | Irrevocably

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haytham and Shay go down to breakfast and the light of a new day uncovers some important truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Too hot to do anything but sit in front of an open window waiting for a breeze and drink ice cubes so here we are - second update of the day!

**HAYTHAM**

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

Barely half an hour before Shay stirs and wakes without startling, thankfully calm and peaceful, smiling faintly and eyes brightening at the sight of me.  
“How do you feel, Shay?”  
“Fine, you?”  
“Never better. It seems you’re very good for me.”   
His smile widens and he stretches an arm slightly to brush the backs of his fingers against my knee.   
“You have laughter lines around your eyes.”  
“You sound surprised. We’re not all destined to age as gracefully as you will. Though given how often you smile, I expect even you will have some laughter lines of your own eventually, Shay.”  
Leaning in, I press a kiss against his temple then another onto his mouth as he turns towards me.  
“Do you want…?”  
“No, hawkling, and stop asking. If I want anything you can be assured I will tell you so.”   
“So… what do you want me to do?”  
“I’m glad you ask. What I want is for you to abuse my hospitality: eat my food, drink my tea - and my claret, if you so incline - break all the spines on my books while you read them by the fire. And rest. Rest as long and often as you need to, Shay. I want you healthy and happy.”  
“I _am_ healthy and happy.”   
“Not as healthy as I’d like. As for happy… Are you happy, Shay?”  
“Aye.”  
No, Shay is not unhappy and looking into his smiling face I can believe he means what he says - in this moment he _is_ happy. Does he even remember what happened earlier or was it all blended into the noxious fumes of his delirium.   
His fingers move again, turning over, and he catches a fold of my breeches between his index and middle finger.  
“I’ll have breakfast brought up for you, hawkling.”  
“What about you?”  
“I usually breakfast downstairs.”  
“I’ll come with you. If I don’t get up now I might never-,” he breaks off, looking startled, very nearly embarrassed, “Unless, you want… I mean, if you…”  
Delightful creature.  
I smile and move onto the bed near him, leaning in until I can brush my lips over the bridge of his nose.   
“The idea has merit but I’m not so ogreish in my appetites as to require you to be permanently naked and abed.”  
I nudge his nose with mine and brush his hair back before kissing him - one of our slow, deep, easy, open-mouthed kisses.  
“Although I’ll admit I like the idea of you naked and asleep in my bed while I work…”  
Shay’s fingers creep along my forearm up to the crook of my arm as I press kisses from his forehead to his temple.  
“Would it be so very terrible to spend a few more hours in bed, hawkling?”  
“I think… I’d like to stretch my legs, sir.”  
“Mmm.”  
I do understand. Shay is used to the Homestead and its acres upon acres of freedom. It is not just the inactivity - all the comforts of this room where even the dawn has barely entered mean nothing to him if he cannot freely leave it.   
“Very well, I’ll help you dress.”  
“I can manage it, sir.”  
“I think we’d better not risk it until we’ve had your shoulder seen to.”  
Throwing off my robe and rolling up my sleeves, I fetch yet another washbasin of warm water and a washcloth and settle to the task of wiping Shay down, dismissing all his objections until he lies quietly, seeming to enjoy these last dregs of intimacy as much as I.   
Barrington had some clothes laid out for Shay in my dressing room: a simple pair of breeches and plain white shirt, a scarlet vest that looks particularly fetching on him and a cashmere-lined silk banyan like the one I’m wearing, but black with gold flying arrows fletched with white and gold where mine is emblazoned with a flurry of leaves in russets and bronzes against a deep royal blue. I had a few of these made in different colours but have never worn the black, too stark for my colouring but a perfect foil for Shay’s.  
The banyan’s generous lines also hide many problems with fit. Shay is barely a shade taller than I am but I’m sensibly broader, larger overall than he is so the clothes hang loose on him. Aside from his generally lean, sinewy build, Shay’s proportions are also different from mine. He’s long-legged with a delicious high rump set on a pelvis that is narrow and rather short. Particularities that telegraph pleasure just as surely as a small waist and wide hips in women do fertility.  
Shay bravely tries to hide his many winces on the way downstairs and I have no notion which of his many bruises is causing him pain. In the plain light of day, however, it immediately becomes clear that he is just as tired and worn as I worried he might be. His youth and look of vigour remain but there’s a residual stiffness in his limbs and he moves sluggishly.  
When we reach the breakfast room, Shay takes one look at the size of it, the seven windows that run the length of it, the table that can seat twelve with ease and the abundance of covered dishes crowded onto it, and lets out a low whistle.   
There ought to be two lines of footmen in here too but Barrington has evidently exercised his customary tact and decided to dispense with them, preferring to stand sentry near the door so he may attend to us himself should the need arise. A good thing too, Shay looks uncomfortable enough as it is.   
Leading him to one of the windows, I look him over while he stares out of it, astonished.   
“There must be four feet of snow up at the homestead.”   
“I expect so.”   
Shay’s eyes are so dark that even in this violent light I can barely tell the pupils from the irises. It should make him harder to read and yet…   
His eyes are also ringed with blue and on closer inspection I now see that nearly the whole left side of his face and parts of the right are the sickly colour of old butter or tallow, the colour of recalcitrant bruises reluctant to finish healing.   
Shay’s mouth wears a smile but ice and dread alone keep it pinned there.   
“Lift up your shirt, Shay. Now, please.”   
Resigned and trembling, he obeys. Entire stretches of his torso, and no doubt the rest of him, are similarly bruised.   
How did I fail to notice?   
Was I deceived by the yellow cast of candlelight and firelight or did I blind myself against anything that would interfere with my desires?   
“Didn’t to worry you with them. They don’t hurt and you couldn’t have done anything…”   
No, I couldn’t have helped but I might have acted otherwise to spare him further discomfort.   
Shay cajoles me with shy, affectionate kisses and caresses, no doubt to distract me, and, really, I can’t see what good can come of letting him believe I’m angry.   
“Your hands smelled of cigars yesterday, fresh cigars.”   
“Did it remind you of Havana?”   
He smiles - a real smile this time.   
“Aye, I guess so.”   
“Do you know how the very best cigars are rolled, Shay?”   
“Aye, the women there roll the tobacco leaves along the inside of their thighs.”   
“That’s right. They sing while they work, sheltered from the sun but not from the heat, and it’s said that the sweat from their skin soaks into the leaf and gives it that fullness of flavour.”   
Shay looks at me, spellbound, before we share another long, heated kiss.   
Barrington must be exasperated.   
It reminds me that perhaps I am being taken in and when I draw away I hold Shay’s chin.   
“Shay, look at me. Is this you? Is this really you or are you simply trying to be what you think I want?”   
Shay’s eyes widen a moment then his lowered lashes veil them.   
“I don’t… I’ve changed, recently. I’m not sure who I am,” he raises his clear gaze to me, “But I’m not pretending. This is me.”   
He holds my gaze a moment then softens.   
“And you, sir? You said you don’t usually…”   
No, I never do this sort of thing. I go out for my pleasures - like attending the theatre. This is unusual for me but not out of character and given a second chance I would do it all again.    
“This is me. The good and the bad.”   
A kiss against his forehead and I lead him to the table.   
“Come, sit by me and help yourself to whatever you want.”   
I help myself to my usual, reasonable selection then settle down with my newspaper, folding down a corner to watch Shay investigate each of the covered dishes in turn, helping himself to the various offerings - starting with a buttered bread roll with a sprinkling of salt, same as last night.   
“I’ve never seen so much food in one place at one time.”  
“Yes, we always have a large spread for breakfast. Enjoy the quiet while you can, this is probably the last time we’ll breakfast alone together. Breakfast is usually open house here. And as it happens, two of the Orders’ junior members will be joining us for lunch. Masters Gist and Weeks, the ones who live here on the estate.”   
A footman appears, delivers his crop of messages and dispatches, then disappears again.   
One of them is a note from Captain James Cook attached to an updated notice concerning a reward to be paid for a pirate the Royal Navy has been after, which has been more than doubled from £2’000 to £5’000. An inordinate sum that gives one the measure of how desperately the Navy wants to pull this thorn from its side.  
“Shay, you’ve been a sailor. I don’t suppose you know who the captain of the _Phantom Queen_ is?”  
“The _Phantom Queen_? You mean the _Morrigan_?”  
As I turn to meet his open, clear-eyed gaze, I’m struck by a dizzying sense of premonition.  
Yes, the _Morrigan_. I remember James Cook once mentioning that was the ship’s real name though she’s more commonly referred to as the _Phantom Queen_ or the _Good Fortune_ , being considered by local seafarers as a very lucky ship with a very lucky captain. A ship that is the terror of the Royal Navy - small, fast, well-armed and deadly, ghostly in its ability to appear and disappear - one day in the rivers of Quebec, next seen in the North Atlantic. A ship manned by a ghost  crew that never diminishes, no matter how many battles it fights and how many prizes it captures. A ship that nobody has yet owned to having seen, all knowledge we possess of it gleaned from conversations overheard by our spies in taverns.  
The same _Morrigan_ Liam O’Brien threatened to destroy if Shay revealed anything and whose name Shay spoke in his sleep.  
“Yes. O’Brien threatened to destroy her. What is she to you?”  
“She’s my ship. I’m her captain.”  
“You, Shay?”  
“Yes, I’ve had her for over three years.”  
Evidently I’m not in as firm control of my expression as I’d supposed and as he watches me, Shay’s expression goes from startled to apprehensive. Reading the situation, Barrington makes a tactical retreat.  
“Shay, I do value your trust but you should not own to that so easily. Don’t you know there’s a price on your head?”   
“There is? Since when?”  
“Over three months! How can you not know this?!”  
“I was away.”   
“Well,” I hand the notice over to Shay, “They’ve just doubled it - from absurd to ruinous.”  
His eyes go wide when he sees the amount.   
“Five _thousand_ pounds?!”  
“Apparently you’re quite the nuisance.”   
The initial shock of this discovery has started to fade but as I watch him I can’t quite reconcile the idea that the beautiful creature eating with such appetite at my breakfast table, who spent all last night purring with pleasure in my arms, is also an assassin with blood on his hands, a fearsome sea captain so important to the Royal Navy they’re willing to pay a small fortune to have him dead and a king’s ransom to have him alive. I can feel myself start to smile as I watch him turn the flyer over in his hands as though he suspects it of not being quite real.  
“I’ve never even seen five thousand pounds all together in one place.”  
“Mmm…”  
He glances at me sharply.  
“You wouldn’t…?”  
I laugh at his expression of tentative alarm.   
“I most certainly will. I know the governor and several of his captains are friends of mine. They won’t take you from me, hawkling, and I’ll let them keep their money, which they desperately need. I just don’t want anyone else to turn you in and I certainly wouldn’t want £5’000 to fall into Assassin hands. O’Brien wouldn’t turn you in, would he?”   
Shay’s eyes widen in surprise then he nods miserably.  
“Aye, he might try to bargain for his own freedom.”  
“Well, I’ll write immediately after breakfast. Put it out of your mind, Shay.”  
Having eaten with my usual restraint, I pour myself another cup of tea then settle back comfortably in my seat to watch Shay. He’s reading the newspaper as he eats and that seems to be taking up a great deal of his attention, which perhaps explains why he seems less self-conscious in his handling of the silverware - still incorrect and inefficient - but nothing can quite detract from his enjoyment of food. He cuts up his cutlets, bacon rashers, sweetbreads, while he reads, dragging his eyes from the paper to relish a few bites before returning to his reading.   
Layered under the simple pleasure of watching him eat is the more subtle satisfaction of seeing him dressed in my clothes, knowing that beneath them his skin still bears some of the marks I left on it, watching him eat food that I’ve provided to replenish energy stores that I exhausted. I am permeating his entire being.   
There was a moment last night, after I’d wrung my given name out of him and my tongue was covered in the taste of his sweat, when I felt I would have killed any man who tried to hurt him or take him from me, would have torn out his throat with my teeth if necessary. In the immediate aftermath I dismissed it as the exaggeration of a lustful and whisky-addled mind. But I can still feel it, that mindless, full-blown, tyrannical possessiveness, glowing quietly like an ember low in my loins, ready to flare up at the barest breath of provocation, and wrapped around it the heavy coils of my desire for Shay.   
This time when Shay lifts his gaze from his plate it doesn’t go to the paper but to me, bright and questioning, and he instantly freezes.   
One single word of command would bring him to me but something holds me back.   
I want him to come to me of his own volition. No, I want him to come to me because he _needs_ to.   
Shay is perfectly still and yet his whole being seems to vibrate - his vital energy is already in motion, held back by just a thread of obedience.   
I leave him hanging there for a few moments longer, relishing this exquisite control over him. I can dismiss and deny him just by looking away, and leave him to swallow his embarrassment at having made his preference so plain.   
But I _want_ him.   
It must show because the next moment he’s flown to me and I’ve barely had time to open my arms for him before he’s in them, somehow fitting his long limbs around me so he’s securely settled on my lap, pressed up against me.   
I have to tilt my head back to kiss him, exposing my throat to him, his entire weight on me, his arms about my neck - and yet I feel utterly in control.   
When I look at him, Shay’s velvet gaze is again veiled behind long lashes and hooded lids. A slow blink as I sink a hand into his hair and rub my thumb over his ear.   
“You don’t resent being here on terms, Shay?”   
Shay shakes his head slightly then turns to press a kiss into my palm.   
“The terms aren’t very hard, sir.”   
There it is, on the tip of my tongue, an offer to let him go, to call it even and close our accounts, to set him free, to offer him his heart’s desire if he’ll only stay, only consider staying. But I can’t break this spell and don’t want to dispel his playful good humour.   
“No?”   
Shay shifts suggestively on my lap, pressing his hips against mine, and his arms tighten around my neck.   
“Well, not yet…”   
“Oh, _you_ …”   
I sit up a little, spilling Shay into my lap. More open-mouthed kisses then I catch his chin to still him so I can bite his mouth slowly. He’s still and submissive now, tremulous and quivering.   
My poor hawkling. I should never have let him get into such a state. He’s still recovering from his injuries and our exertions of last night and while I have developed stakes in this situation, they’re nothing compared to the moral and and practical dilemma Shay faces. I mustn’t make things more difficult for him than they need to be.   
For the second time in the space of minutes, I’m searching for the words to relieve some of the pressure on him but before I find them, there’s a knock on the door and Barrington appears.   
“Sir-.”   
Shay’s reaction is immediate and even Barrington can’t quite hide his surprise at it but he recovers quickly.   
“Sir, a courier has arrived with an urgent message from Johnson. He says a reply is expected.”   
“Very well. Make him comfortable, leave the message on my desk.”   
“Yes, sir.”   
Shay is still coiled on my lap, ready to strike, but unmistakably in _my_ defence. I’m not entirely sure what to think. Fear for himself I would understand, but I am in my own house, surrounded by my own people, in a city that already recognises me as part of its elite.   
Shay’s tense muscles initially resist as I try to draw him into my arms again but as they start quivering he becomes malleable again.   
“There, Shay, there’s nothing to worry about. Nobody here will hurt you.”   
Shay’s limbs are still trembling as though in shock, he is docile now and when I settle him onto my shoulder he buries his face against my neck.   
“You know you’re safe here, don’t you, Shay? Use your sight, you’ll see you have no enemies in this house.”   
Shay shifts, resting his forehead against my neck now.   
“I can’t.”   
“Why not?”   
“I… I haven’t been able to use it since I… fell.”   
_Ah_.   
No wonder he’s been so cooperative. Tired and wounded, blind to the danger he knows surrounds him, he did the only thing possible and decided to trust me. No wonder he’s so worn and anxious.   
But he fell weeks ago. The cut on his brow bears testimony to the strength of the blow, but even so…  
Easing him off my shoulder I see the slight frown and the lowered lashes. Carefully, painstakingly, I bury my fingers in his hair and feel around his skull for bumps or fractures.   
“You must still be concussed.”   
Yes, a couple of bumps, but nothing that isn’t healing. He did take at least one more blow to the head yesterday, however, and that may have reawakened an underlying fragility.   
I wish he had told me but I understand his reticence - I certainly wouldn’t have admitted to such a weakness in his place.   
“It should return when you’re fully recovered.”   
His gaze meets mine.   
“Really?”   
“I expect so. It is an inherited trait, I doubt it can simply be lost.”   
Shay tilts his head thoughtfully at this.   
“Shouldn’t you answer that message? Sir.”   
“Mmm. And you need rest. Would you like to come and lie down in my study while I work?”   
“I don’t want to disturb you, sir, and I… I would like to stretch my legs a bit.”   
Is that a veiled reference to the discomfort he must feel after the night we shared or is it symptomatic of an emotional withdrawal?   
“May I, sir?”   
“Of course you may, we agreed you’re to have the run of the estate. Although, you should perhaps not wander too far until you’re stronger and have a better sense of the layout. You’ll find that even this wing is still being finished and some sections are encumbered with buckets of paint, ladders and stored furniture. When you tire of exploring, come to my study.”   
“Aye, sir.”   
Shay looks solemn as a child who’s just been dressed in his Sunday best. When I brush my thumb over his ear again he quivers and when I kiss him he leans into me as though he needed reassurance.   
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay with me?”   
“I…”   
“Very well, but don’t push yourself.”   
I help him to his feet and once outside the breakfast room I point him in the direction of the nearest drawing room, pausing a moment to watch him before going to my study.   
This business with the Royal Navy changes things irrevocably. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A banyan is a kind of long, casual over-garment men wore in the 18th century.
> 
> James Cook isn't posted to the North American station until years later but I couldn't be bothered to create another OC so here he is. 
> 
> I'm pretty sure 5000 pounds was a ludicrous sum at the time but I'm going with Ubisoft in-game market prices - if a polar bear pelt can be worth 500 pounds then Shay can damn well be worth ten of those (and has my brain melted or do White Whale Skins cost 3000 pounds?).  
> (I'm using a borrowed laptop with an American keyboard and I have no idea where the pound sign is hidden)


	16. Shay | The Lighthouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shay goes exploring and tries to glean whatever impressions and information he can about the Grand Master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shortish chapter from Shay's confused POV.  
> Probably the last of the slow chapters.

**SHAY**

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

  
This house is never-ending.  
The “master suite” with bedroom, bathroom and dressing room must be nearly the size of a whole floor of Achilles’ house. And this is just the west wing. Master Kenway must have added to the building, don’t remember it being this big. He’s also knocked down all the walls and reorganised the space. The corridors and pokey rooms all gone too, replaced by long, large, airy rooms with doors on either end, all connected and held up by columns. All the wood panelling and fancy wallpapers are gone and marble and plaster put in instead. Everything straighter and simpler. And unfinished.  
Hobbling through the next doorway I find another eerie room filled with trunks and furniture covered in dust-sheets.  
This is the seventh room I’ve looked into and apart from one room where they’ve started doing the walls up in a moss-coloured raw silk they’re all like this. Didn’t really believe Master Kenway when he said he was still getting set up, the rooms I was in look so finished and _settled_. These are so still and ghostly and so new I can almost smell the plaster drying.  
Slowly walking down the length of the room, I decide to look into just one more before heading back. On top of getting tired I might also get lost, the place is big enough, though it’s also filled with staff, all very polite, very helpful. I’d expected to feel watched but I don’t, they’re all so smiling and kind to me, just like Master Kenway is - I guess that by now they have some idea of why I’m here and Master Kenway did tell them I was a guest. He probably sees me as even less of a threat than before. I have no intention of being a threat to him.  
I’ve never been in a house this big. I know Master Kenway wants it to become a kind of headquarter for the Order but still, can’t believe it all belongs to just one man. All of us up at the Homestead could fit in here and still have space to spare and yet Master Kenway lives here alone. I’ve seen places bigger than this out there too - the house on that estate in Virginia he mentioned could probably swallow up this whole house and the grounds - a plantation estate, like Mount Vernon, or the ones in the West Indies that sit on little hills in the middle of endless sugar plantations like decorations on a cake. The Rosa del Sur is huge but she’s a city house and she would fit in just one wing of this place.  
Master Kenway’s house is a lot like him - all order and clarity and… harmony.  
Has he always lived like this? Maybe that’s why he’s so generous, even with me, because he’s always had so much of everything. But generosity is not something I ever expected in a Templar. Nor kindness, nor humour, nor honesty and openness, nor gentleness. Master Kenway is almost nothing that I expected in a Templar.  
I try the next room. The crown moulding has been put in and touched up with gold, bringing out all the ribbons and garlands and outlining the panels that vault up and into the ceiling. An enormous carpet is rolled up in one of the corners, the colour of parchment and patterned with flowers in deep reds and pinks on dark green stems and leaves - climbing roses, maybe. In another corner there are rolls of China silk paper, pale silvery gold and covered with long-tailed birds and flowering branches. It reminds me of the clothes Master Kenway was wearing yesterday, made with enough silk to rig a galleon and enough gold thread to sink it.  
This place is nothing like the homestead where you’re always connected to the earth. Cabins made of rough-hewn logs, stone fireplaces, nothing quite perfect so they let in the scent of damp earth and wet grass, the smell of the sea from the cliffside and the warm sharp smell from the stables. You can hear birdsong on the wind and the sound of beating beaks carried through the wood of the trees and the vague sound of people and animals all around. And the feeling is even stronger on the _Morrigan_. Through her you can feel the ocean and the wind come alive beneath your feet and all around you. So different from here. It’s like being disconnected from the universe - all the stone and wood and plants and animals changed into invisible bricks and planks and cottons and furs, into huge perfect fireplaces and beautiful little end tables and patterned rugs and curtains that look nothing like what they’re made of.  
A jab of pain in my chest as I reach out to touch the silk.  
I should head back. I’ve had time to test my strength and injuries without Master Kenway watching me. He watches me all the time, closely, like he knows there’s something wrong with me - he’s worried about me. Don’t know why, not sure how he thinks I could credibly claim to have escaped if I look all scrubbed, brushed and curled, bandaged, and dressed in the Grand Master’s own clothes.  
Last night I felt so much better that for a few hours I really did convince myself that there was nothing much wrong with me at all. That all I’d really needed all this time was rest and food and a little warmth. But since I woke up this morning all my aches and pains have been returning and how. I know now that I’m not just bent, I’m broken - that’s why my body keeps getting cold, keeps getting tired. I’ve felt like this once before.  
Don’t think I could credibly claim to have escaped at all, not in this condition - can barely manage the stairs.  
But I have to go. Somehow, I’ll just have to push past the pain because I have to get away before Liam has a chance to tell him the truth about me. I have to go before they come for me or Master Kenway might get hurt. He says he knows people in the Navy and they’re always lookin’ for able seamen, maybe I could volunteer on a ship going far from here, but how would I explain it to Master Kenway? He’s been so good to me but would he do that?  
_Is this you?_  
Aye, this is me, I’ve never been more sure of it. But what about Master Kenway? Is this really him? Is he really the Templar Grand Master? I’ve been here - how long? - twelve hours but I feel like I already understand him and I haven’t caught him out in a lie yet.  
At breakfast he was his careful, precious Grand Master self again, never touching anything directly, using his cutlery or serving spoons and even tongs to pick up his bread rolls. Even managed to eat his stupid soft-boiled egg without ever touching the shell. Still staring at him, I was starting to think I’d just dreamt it all up but then he looked at me, smiling, and passed me the paper like it was normal. Could Liam be this wrong about him? Aye, it’s possible. Liam could hate him just for having all this, for being too rich and too lucky - too privileged.  
A knock at the door. It’s Barrington with a tall pot and cup on a small tray that he puts down on a small table covered with a dust sheet next to me.  
“Master Kenway thought you might need fortifying, sir.”  
Hot cocoa, still steaming and thick as stew. It’s delicious, hot and rich.  
“This is amazin’, what do you make it with? Melted gold?”  
“A species of gold, sir. An egg yolk beaten in with saffron and Cayenne pepper. The same way the master takes it when he’s feeling under the weather.”  
Not sure what to say to that so I take another sip and try to secretly watch the butler. Not sure I’m managing _secretly_ very well.  
Master Kenway I’m still not sure about but this Barrington is just exactly the kind of toffee-nosed butler you’d expect a Templar Grand Master to have. I know he probably doesn’t want me here but he’s not hostile. Impossible to read. I guess Achilles is kind of like that. He can smile and speak gently while sending you to your death.  
“I’m sorry for all the extra work, I hope I’m not too much trouble.”  
“No trouble at all, sir. Would you like to be shown some of the better rooms?”  
“Ah, no, thank you, I think I’ll start going back.”  
“In that case, sir, would you like to be accompanied back?”  
“Aye, if it’s no trouble.”  
“No trouble at all, sir. This way.”  
We slowly follow each other back to the main staircase, each of us trying to fall behind the other, and I’m startin’ to wonder how to get rid of him so I can keep exploring but luckily when we get there one of the footmen signals him.  
“I can find my way from here. Thank you.”  
He nods and marches off and I make my way to where I think the kitchens are. Sure enough, I soon hear banter and the banging of pots and when I’m close enough to look in I can see that messenger is still there, being watered and fed, and so I listen a bit before making myself known.  
Of course my being downstairs has them all in uproar and for a panicky moment they’re threatenin’ to call Barrington but soon they all calm down and eventually they drop some of their deference.    
Liam’s mother was in service and I was practically raised - well, maybe more spoilt than raised - by the hands on my father’s ship. I know how these people think, I’m one of them. This is a happy house, its people are proud of it and of the master many of them followed all the way from London.  
And they’re nearly as curious about me as I am about them. Maybe Master Kenway was telling the truth when he said he’d never done this sort of thing before.  
The last few months should have taught me to be more careful who I trust but I can’t help liking and trusting Master Kenway. I liked him ever since he said “good” to me in the carriage, so pleased with me. I like that he smiles a lot, I like how warm his eyes are when he does smile. I like how soft his voice is. Liam’s voice is usually low like that too but it gets loud when he wants it to. Master Kenway’s voice goes a little hoarse whenever he forces it, like he couldn’t shout even if he wanted to.  
I’m exhausted with trying to doubt everything. Now I want nothing more than to be back with Master Kenway, listening to him talk, because when he explains things they become clear and simple. Meeting him was like spying a lighthouse on a stormy night and I’m suddenly terrified of losing sight of him.  
Barrington appears with a face like a granite statue of Jupiter about to throw a lightening bolt and tells me Master Kenway has finished working for now and I may join him at my convenience.  
I think that means _now_ so I follow Barrington back up to the main hall then the study while a footman with a tea tray trots behind us.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always figured that given his obsession with Order, Haytham would have loved anything in the neo-classical line.


	17. Haytham | The Rest is Irrelevant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the day progresses, Haytham despairs at seeing Shay’s condition deteriorate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really long chapter as we head for the climax of part I. 
> 
> Thanks again for all the lovely comments and kudos!

**HAYTHAM**

  
_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

  
Barrington steps in with fresh messages and I pause in my work to look through them as he collects what messages are ready to be sent off.  
“Barrington, do you know what Shay is up to?”  
“Master Cormac is… below stairs… in the kitchens, sir.”  
I can’t help raising an eyebrow at my snobbish butler who has almost choked on the words.  
“In the kitchens? What is he doing there?”  
“He’s… helping Cook skin hares.”  
At this I set my papers down on the table.  
“Barrington?”  
“He got away from me, sir, and found his way to the kitchens - I think he wanted to apologise to the downstairs staff for the extra work and thank them for their care. By the time I rediscovered him he was quite at home there and I couldn’t see my way to extricating him. You did say he was to have the run of the house.”  
I can’t help laughing at the story and at Lane’s contrary expression. Cook came over from England despite her age and ought not to be skinning hares herself but then she always was a trifle stubborn.  
“I did, and I expect he’s quite good at skinning hares. He’s won Cook over then?”  
“Everyone seems very taken with him, sir.”  
“We’re not going to have any problems with any of the housemaids or kitchenmaids?”  
“I doubt it, sir. I expect the situation is quite clear.”  
“Good.”  
I value discretion in all matters, particularly regarding my personal life, but having Shay’s position fixed from the beginning, even if only implicitly, will save future trouble and heartbreak. I’m surprised, however, by the glow of gratification I feel at having my ownership of him, such as it is, recognised.  
“What did you think of him, Lane?”  
“He looks the part, sir, but his manner is not quite as convincing. May I ask how much training he’s received?”  
“Years of it, from what I understand, and the equipment he was found with supports it.”  
“Perhaps he’s a better dissembler than he seems, sir?”  
“I think it very unlikely.”  
Barrington straightens one of the nearby Song dynasty vases, rotating it a fifth of a degree on its stand.  
“Is he in bad shape?”  
“Difficult to say, sir, he’s doing his best to hide it. He’s very stiff, his breathing is not quite what it should be and he sometimes holds his side unconsciously so the limp may be more than a leg injury.”  
“He has some rather horrific bruising all over his body, several days old at least, however.”  
“That cut ought to have been stitched up.”  
“I’ve written to Meadows and asked him to come this evening, do you think Shay will be all right until then?”  
“His seems stable, though he could use some rest.”  
“That also reminds me, you should probably have someone tell him I’m taking a break and that he can join me at his convenience - no need to rush.”  
“Yes, sir. I’ll have some fresh tea brought.”  
As the door closes behind him, I go over to the couch and sit back to ponder this hypothetical ownership of Shay. I didn’t like to trouble him with it at the time, but this business with the Navy complicates things. The Redcoats let me have Shay when we all thought he was of no account, particularly when compared with Liam O’Brien, and I could easily have shouldered any blame that might have arisen from his ‘escape’, if indeed it were even noticed. This still would have left the not inconsiderable problem of concocting a plausible enough story to make Achilles and Liam believe that Shay was held against his will and revealed nothing and thus ensure his safe return to the Homestead. My doubts as to the practicality and possibility of carrying this off have only grown since this morning but this matter with the Royal Navy may be something even I cannot untangle.  
My connection with the Navy and with the governor in particular are too valuable to risk even for Shay’s sake so even though I’ve told them Shay turned himself in and offered to forego the prize money, I cannot in all honour simply release Shay, escaped or otherwise. Besides, now that his identity as the _Phantom Queen_ ’s captain is known, he could be retaken at any moment once he’s outside my protection. There was no way around writing to the governor, it was the only way to preempt anyone else giving up Shay’s identity and location, particularly O’Brien. If Shay’s certainty that O’Brien would give him up is founded, then he is already unprotected.  
Furthermore, as the _Morrigan_ ’s captain he’s now too valuable for the Grand Master to simply let go, particularly if he intends to go back to his Mentor. No, I was raised to be a Grand Master first and a private person second. My own desires aside, I now have a powerful objective motive for wanting to keep Shay. So the question is: how?  
As I continue to ponder the question, I hear muffled footfalls coming down the hallway and I don’t need to use my second sight to know it is Shay. He’s preceded by Barrington and followed by one of the footmen with the tea things and after they’ve been set down on the coffee table and we’re left alone, I motion Shay to come to me. A tug and he’s across my lap, smiling brightly. He lets his slippers fall to the carpet before putting his long legs up on the couch.  
I nuzzle his hair then bring one of his hands up to brush his fingertips against my lips.  
“No smell of hare anywhere.”  
“You heard.”  
“I did.”  
“You’re not angry?”  
“About hares? No. Besides, I’m not sure I have it in me to be angry with you, Shay.”  
His eyes soften and he tilts his head up for a kiss. He seems so secure in my affections and so easy with my handling of him, ours seems an intimacy of years not hours. I think he knows my weakness for him is unfeigned and I’ve noticed how much he craves my approval.  
“That messenger was still there when I went down to the kitchens,” Shay murmurs when I release him, gently rubbing his nose against my jawline, “You must be a very good master. Your people are so proud to work for you they were bragging.”  
“That sounds nice. What did they say?”  
“That you’re the kindest master they’ve ever known, that you’ve never raised your voice to any of them, that you’re fair and generous and loyal and that you always consider their needs.”  
I punctuate each point by pressing my lips to his forehead, his brow, working my way down to his mouth.  
“Fair _and_ generous? Surely I can only be one or the other.”  
“Their words - I’d’ve just said absurdly indulgent.”  
“Shameless flatterer! There’s no need for that, you know you can have your way with me whenever you want.”  
Shay’s face is the very picture of contentment as he looks up at me. A strand of hair has come loose so I smooth it back and retie his hair, held back by a length of red ribbon cut from the same spool my own hair tie came from, then I look him over carefully.  
The bruises are still there but the swelling has all but vanished, persisting only around the cuts where the skin has split. Many of the smaller cuts have closed but some of the larger ones have a red tinge around them and Shay looks worn, there are still shadows under his eyes.  
“Shay, could I convince you to go back to bed?”  
“To…?”  
“No, Shay. To sleep. Or you could rest here on the couch while I do some reading.”  
Shay doesn’t answer, the very faintest wrinkle on his brow as he looks at me.  
Reaching out, I retrieve a pillow and tuck it under him. That velvety look is back in his eyes.  
“Might help me sleep if we did a bit o’ the other thing first…”  
“Hmm, do you think so?”  
“Can’t be sure ’til we try it.”  
“I suppose not.”  
He smiles and returns my gentle kisses warmly. I slip a hand under his banyan and fumble at the buttons of the vest.  
“You’re wearing too many layers.”  
“S’your fault.”  
He helps me unbutton the vest and lies back as I peel away all the layers of silk and cashmere and wool to run my hand over the thin lawn shirt, smoothing it over his chest. He’s so fair I can only barely make out his nipples through the fine cotton and I tug the shirt loose from the breeches and slip my hand under it, running my palm over Shay’s skin, mindful of the cuts and bruises, watching him lean his head back.  
“What are you thinking of, hawkling?”  
“Pismaniye. It’s a kind of sweet.”  
“I know it well. I was in Constantinople not long ago. Should I have  some made up for us?”  
Instead of answering he touches my chin very gently with a fingertip, just beneath my bottom lip, trailing down.  
“You’re like that… You look all sweet and light and fancy on the outside but you’ve got plenty of substance hidden away. Just like pismaniye.”  
_Well now._  
“And you, Shay?”  
His thoughtful, faraway look melts into a grin.  
“Something simple. No surprises with me.”  
“That hasn’t been my experience. You’ve astonished me at every turn.”  
Another deep kiss and then he looks up at me, wide-eyed and ingenuous.  
“Are you… are you really Grand Master Kenway?”  
“You know I am. Who else could it be?”  
“Don’t know… Your father? You could be named after him.”  
“Clever. But no, I’m the only Haytham in the family.”  
He watches me, serene, and I catch myself hoping the nightmares and anxiety have passed.  
“How did you enjoy exploring the house? I’m afraid you’d already seen the best rooms.”  
“It’s beautiful. Reminds me of the old Roman places around Naples - temples and things.”  
“So it should. How well-traveled you are, Shay.”  
“I’m twenty-five, I’ve been sailing for over fifteen years. If it’s workmen you need to finish, you could go down to the docks for them - a couple of carpenters and their mates could do most of the work.”  
Just twenty-five. Six years my junior, five years younger than Liam O’Brien.  
I suppose there’s nothing surprising in a sailor being well-traveled but I can’t help being astonished afresh by how cosmopolitan Shay is, so deeply influenced by his travels and the things he’s seen that they’ve become second nature to him. Perhaps this too explains how open-minded he is.  
_What a wonderful addition to the Order_.  
Still caressing his skin and watching him slip away into half-sleep, I remind myself that I still have work to do if he’s to become a member at all. Shay aside, I also have the Order’s existing members to contend with. Shay’s value is evident to me but it may not be to the others. They’ll object to his past as an Assassin and pirate, to his youth and inexperience, to the risk of making him privy to our secrets when he might go rogue and turn against us, even to the manner of his recruitment since there will be no hiding that he’s spent at least a night in my bed. And, of course, he’s an omega - a creature inherently irrational, unreliable, weak both physically and mentally, who exists only to bear children, unfit to be a member of any serious society or organisation.  
Charles Lee too is an omega but well-bred, educated, with money and family behind him, and who, through sheer hard work and an early start in his career before he presented, has built up a solid reputation and a high enough position within the army to prove himself useful despite the handicaps of his nature. Shay Cormac is an entirely different breed of omega. He comes from a modest background, has received just a fraction of the education the likes of Charles and Benjamin Church received, has no people and was a petty criminal before becoming an Assassin and pirate. The army and the Order consider themselves well rewarded for the pains they take to protect and support Charles but it does take planning, time and energy. The question is clear: is Shay Cormac worth the trouble?  
Fortunately, the two Order members joining us for lunch are junior members and will have little say though I have a sense they may not object.  
Christopher Gist is a frontiersman, a soldier, an adventurer and a ruined alpha. Drink, women, gambling, and a raft of other trifling debaucheries have compromised the very virility that makes him an alpha. His condition has been steadily improving since Colonel Monro took him under his wing and he’s retained the manner and the swagger but he’s still visibly diminished. Notwithstanding all this, he’s been an invaluable help to us by mapping out previously uncharted areas of the frontier and he’s a friend to that young fool Washington and even saved his life during the Braddock debacle.  
Gist also trained and recruited Jack Weeks, a concealed omega. Born in Albany, with escaped Virginian slaves as parents, Weeks too, like Shay, spent his youth in petty thievery until Gist noticed him and taught him, among other things, to emulate the behaviour and mannerisms of any social group. Gist too who taught him to hide his omegahood by feigning to be a beta, unshackling him from at least one weight he was born with - there’s nothing any of us can do about the colour of his skin.  
The two of them share a cottage on the estate and have, in fact, lived here longer than I have. Gist works directly under Monro while Weeks finds himself in Johnson’s employ more often than not so they’re not as much together as one might assume. I did once offer them the use of an individual cottage each and was politely but firmly refused. I’ve never questioned their living arrangements nor looked at them too closely since. To question the propriety of it would be to risk revealing Week’s omegahood.  
Both will, I feel, take to Shay - he’s one of them. Neither Gist or Weeks have the clout of a Benjamin Church, our Boston ‘fixer’, or a William Johnson, who coordinates relations with the native peoples not just on behalf of the Order but practically for all the colonies, but they too are valuable to the Order and their faith in the Order’s principles is sincere, just as Shay’s in the Brotherhood’s broad ideologies seems to be. In my view, these have never been inherently incompatible. And it will be good for Shay to spend some time with men who are so very different from what he believes Templars to be.  
Shay is quiet in my arms, seeming almost asleep, but he suddenly stiffens, opening his eyes and splaying a hand over my chest protectively. Perhaps with his second sight gone, his other senses have become keener.  
“Easy, Shay, it’s just Barrington.”  
He relaxes just a fraction, still alert, when we hear Lane’s voice through the door, informing us that Gist and Weeks have arrived.  
Shay looks a little shaken and nervous so I press a long kiss against his temple.  
“If you’d rather not meet them-.”  
“No, I’ll come.”  
From the veiled looks of curiosity that Christopher Gist and Jack Weeks meet us with I take it Barrington has told them something of my mystery guest. Shay, for his part, pales visibly when he sees them but quickly rallies as I make introductions.  
The meal starts off a little stiffly as my guests try to find their marks with each other but the formality soon clears when I ask my two subordinates about their preparations for their forthcoming trip to Boston, signalling my level of trust in Shay. Johnson asked Charles Lee to survey an area north-west of Boston and since Gist and Weeks have done that sort of work before Charles asked that they be part of his fatigue party.  
Shay knows enough of the frontier and the importance of maps to hold his own in the conversation, without ever giving away anything that might point to his being an Assassin, and as the conversation flows from one topic to another - the war, the upcoming end-of-year festivities, the atmosphere here in New York and the iniquities its powerful gangs have created - he and Jack Weeks too find a great deal of common ground.  
The main course is served and when Shay recognises the meat on his plate he gives me a quick, guilty look.  
The three of them get along well, just as I’d expected. They all come from rough, hard-working, modest backgrounds and are, each in his own way, self-made men - ideal colonials. They also share friendly, outgoing natures, ready to accept anyone as a friend until given reason to do otherwise. Gist and Weeks seem to like Shay a great deal and Shay seems to like them in return, though I catch him looking closely at Jack Weeks a few times. But that could be anything. Jack Weeks’ colour puts him on an even lower rung than Shay on the social ladder, and yet here he is at my table. It’s hardly likely that Shay would hold the colour of Jack’s skin or his sexual nature against him, but I expect he’s surprised to see someone like him here, treated by all of my household as though he belongs, which he does. Perhaps Shay realises that my treatment of him was not as favoured as he’d believed.  
I let them talk, happy to enjoy their camaraderie and by the end of the meal, they’re discussing nearby hunting spots and Weeks suggests going out to shoot foxes after lunch.  
Shay instinctively glances at me, a refusal already on the tip of his tongue and he senses my refusal before I signal it.  
“Shay is a little unwell. Perhaps next time.”  
Gist and Weeks soon make their farewells, perhaps anxious not to overstay their welcome while my guest is here.  
I take Shay though the door that connects my study to the library and watch him marvel at sheer number of books that line the double height walls punctuated by old scrolls and parchments, maps and charts, and the cards on which everything is catalogued. He spends long minutes looking at the giant spinning globe, tracing with his fingertips, place to place, where he’s been and where I’ve been and after one glance at them tells me my naval charts of the area around the Gulf of St Lawrence contain inaccuracies.  
“You’re sure?”  
“Aye, sir. The waters there are much shallower than on these charts, bit dangerous for them, given how close it is to the naval yard in Halifax.”  
“You know about the yard.”  
“Everybody knows about the yard, sir. Do you have a book on pirates?”  
“Several, though I’d have thought you’d be the authority on pirates.”  
“I wanted to read about someone called Calico…”  
“Calico Jack Rackham? I know just the book you need.”  
I retrieve a well-thumbed copy of _A General History of the Pyrates_ for him and watch him flip through it a moment.  
He has a million questions about the library: Where are the books from? Have I read them all? Who chooses them? Why are they important?  
“Nobody knows everything and you’ll sometimes find you don’t have the information you need. That happens to everyone. The most important thing is knowing _where_ you can find the information you need. Do you know what your name means, Shay?”  
“No.”  
“Well, why don’t you try to find out while I get through a few reports?”  
He nods, eyes alight, and I give him a quick kiss.  
“Let me know if you have questions or need any help.”  
I go through to my study, knowing perfectly well that he won’t ask for help.  
Sure enough, he presently comes over to my desk to lean against it, holding a book and when his gaze finally meets mine it is full of unspoken things.  
“Shay, from the Gaelic ‘Séaghdha’ meaning ‘admirable’, ‘hawk’ or ‘hawklike’.”  
“Very good.”  
He smiles and nudges my knee with his.  
“Couldn’t find yours.”  
“You won’t find it in that book, it’s not of Gaelic origin but Arabic. You could look for it, it’s in the same section.”  
“Arabic?”  
I nod, smiling at him fondly and reaching out to run the back of my finger along a long thigh.  
“Go on, hawkling, I’ll help you if you can’t find it.”  
Eventually he reappears, pausing in the doorway between the library and the study, holding the relevant tome, and this time he can’t quite meet my gaze.  
“Haytham, a transliteration of an Arabic word meaning ‘young eagle’.”  
“Very good, Shay. Now come here.”  
He obeys, gaze still lowered, approaching until he’s close enough for me to catch hold of him and pull him onto my lap for a leisurely kiss.  
“How did you like Gist and Weeks?”  
“Very much. They’re not… how I expected Templars to be.”  
I smile into his hair and breathe in deeply.  
“Good, this way you’ll still have company when you tire of mine.”  
“You must have more imagination than I do,” Shay’s husky voice is muffled against my neck, “Can’t see that happenin’ at all.”  
And he means every word.  
“No? But then we’ve been together fewer than twenty-four hours. How will you fare after two… three days subjected to my domineering ways and ceaseless demands?”  
“Think I’ll manage.”  
A knock and Barrington precedes the inevitable tea tray then reminds us the tailor is due in half an hour.  
I press Shay to accept a steaming cup just as the sound of laughter drifts in from the gardens - unmistakably Gist.  
“That was fast.”  
Taking his cup and saucer with him, Shay strolls over to the window.  
He seems at ease in my house and with its people, despite his precarious position, and while I suspect this is in part due to his character, I also remind myself that as a ship’s captain he’s used to being obeyed and, to some degree, served.  
As I observe him, admiring how handsome he looks silhouetted against the large window in that dark banyan and holding the starkly patterned Crown Derby teacup, I notice his hands begin to tremble.  
“Shay?”  
He doesn’t hear me, too caught up in whatever he’s thinking and after calling his name again I stand and go to him.  
“Shay?”  
This time he turns to me and I’m stunned by the depth of the anguish in his dark eyes.  
I gently take the cup from him and as he looks down he notices his shaking hands and slowly clenches his fists to still them. I set the cup down and look at him, uncertain what to do. I want to hold him but he no longer meets my gaze and there’s a distance between us.  
I reach out to brush back the usual stray strand of hair and as I do he moves into my arms.  
His entire body is trembling with emotion and his arms are painfully tight around me but I say nothing. Something has upset him, something about Jack Weeks. Even if he noticed Jack is an omega, there isn’t a hint of jealousy in Shay. And it can’t possibly be Weeks’ descent - not after Achilles and besides it simply isn’t in his nature.  
“There, hawkling. It’s all right. But I wish you would talk to me.”  
“You promise you’ll tell me before seeing Liam?”  
This again. Why does he fret so about my meeting O’Brien?  
“You have my word, Shay.” His look of deep misery and anxiety are more than I can bear. “Do you want to see him? Shall I take you with me?”  
He reacts with immediate and unmitigated terror, his knuckles showing white as he grips my sleeve, every muscle in his body going rigid.  
“No! Please! Tell him I’m dead!”  
“It’s all right, Shay. I won’t force you. Not if you don’t want to see him.”  
He draws away to run his gaze over me, frantic and despairing, like he’s seeing me for the first and last time, then gives me a hard, hungry kiss. I let him take as much as he needs and eventually he settles his head on my shoulder. His heart is still beating wildly and though I hold him close it takes a long time to slow and steady.  
He’s upset. He’s had many of these moments of upset. Too many.  
“May I sleep in your room again tonight?”  
“In my bed, in my arms, where you belong, hawkling.”  
Just as I’m about to suggest he go upstairs to rest, Barrington knocks and announces from the other side of the door that the tailor has arrived and is waiting in the drawing room.  
“I can ask them to come back tomorrow.”  
“No. No, I’m fine.”  
But he doesn’t relinquish his grip on me for few moments yet and when he does he silently begs for another kiss, his gaze soft and apologetic.  
Soon we’re in the drawing room and Shay endures being prodded and measured by the tailors assistance with a kind of stoical indifference. The tailor himself can barely contain his excitement at dressing Shay as we go over patterns and fabric swatches. I’ve barely had time to explain that I’d like him to have two good sets of everyday clothes and a riding outfit at least when one of the assistants comes over to whisper something in his master’s ear.  
“Master Kenway, it seems young Master Finnegan’s clothes would be a good fit for Master Cormac. We brought them here to ask for instructions… Just a very few alterations would be necessary… Until the new clothes are made up.”  
_Ah_.  
The Finnegan boy was one of Monro’s proteges. We’d ordered a new set of clothes for him but he died before ever trying them on. I should have noticed the similar builds. Finnegan too was Irish and handsome, though not my taste the way Shay is. I don’t like the idea of Shay wearing a dead man’s clothes but I suppose it will do until his own are ready.  
“Very well.”  
As the tailor and his assistants leave, Shay’s mask falls away entirely and he looks haggard and wraithlike, and once we’re back in my study I convince him to lie down to rest, though it takes a long time for him to finally fall asleep.  
I try to get back to work but I can’t concentrate and I feel a flood or relief when a note comes from John Meadows telling me to expect him at seven and thanking me for the use of my carriage, which I offered to send for him.  
I kneel by Shay, touch his hair lightly and watch his eyes open slowly.  
“Shay? I thought you might like to join me for tea. A few fresh scones with cream might do you good.”  
He doesn’t answer and instead reaches out to touch his fingertips to my chest lightly.  
“You’re real.”  
I catch his hand and bring it to my mouth, smiling.  
“I’m afraid so, hawkling. Can you manage some tea?”  
Shay nods but makes no move to sit up, laying quiet and comfortable and smiling gently, dark eyes brighter than ever.  
When I press my lips against his forehead I find he’s burning up with fever. A chill runs through me, as at the realisation of a deep dread, but I try not to show it, aware of Shay’s keen gaze on me.  
“I’d better order a bath for later.”  
Stepping out, I ask Barrington to have another message sent to Meadows asking him to come at his very earliest convenience and to have everything made read in the bedroom.  
Back in the study, I help Shay sit up, propped into the corner of the couch, then settle by him. I manage to juggle some tea into the cups and some scones onto the plates but though Shay takes a few sips of tea, he almost imperceptibly balks when I hand him a plate. He thanks me but barely takes a lick of the scone and I can see perfectly well that he has no appetite.  
We make small talk but now I’m acutely aware of his desire to deceive me. He knows himself to be unwell, he knows I know it, but he’s still trying to hide the degree and cause from me. What could he be hiding? Could he really be pregnant with O’Brien’s child? At three or even four months he might not yet be showing. Were his submissiveness and cooperation merely the ploys necessary to secure his freedom and protect his child - _O’Brien_ ’s child? Has he been deceiving me all this time the way he’s clearly deceiving me now?  
Meanwhile, Shay is miles away, staring at his teacup with unseeing eyes, and even through the dense fog of my doubts I can’t bear to see him like this.  
“Come, Shay.”  
The next moment he’s in my arms and I’m flooded with contentment at having him there and the soothing scent of him - _they_ are all real and the rest is irrelevant.  
Shay’s grip on me tightens.  
“I have to tell you-.”  
“Very well, but later, Shay. Just rest now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lawn: a fine woven (cotton textile).
> 
> Pismaniye: a Turkish variant of cotton candy.
> 
> Doctor John Meadows: Haytham's physician
> 
> Fatigue party: group of soldiers ordered to do non-military tasks


	18. John | Diagnosis & Prognosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Haytham’s physician, John Meadows, arrives, the mystery of Shay’s condition is cleared up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! Back home with my laptop so hopefully it'll be an end to excessive typos and general weirdness that have plagued the last few chapters. 
> 
> Original Character POV in this chapter because I need a neutral (and informed) point of view and couldn't co-opt an existing character to fill the role. 
> 
> As a point of historical background, this is a period when the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment overlap and the study of human anatomy and medical science start to take off - but both are still in their early infancy. A patient being operated on usually had less than a 50% chance of surviving the operation (without anaesthetic) and might still then die of infection afterwards. Some of the less modern doctors of the time might still bleed their patients to balance the humours - that sort of thing.  
> That said, I'm not a medical student or anything, so please take the technical parts of the following chapter with a pinch of salt. 
> 
> Enjoy!

**JOHN**

Meadows Surgery, New York, December 1755

 

As I finish seeing to the last of my patients, I hear Kenway’s carriage rumble to a stop outside and glancing out of the window I can see the passersby stop and stare at seeing such a luxurious vehicle and its liveried men outside my almost impoverished surgery. The few times I’ve been to Kenway House I’ve taken a cab but with the streets in the state they’re in transport in general has been thin on the ground today.

It’s half an hour early and the why of it is explained when the groom comes knocking and hands me another, more pressingly-worded note from my friend.

Making the round of my cramped premises, I collect up a variety of tools and instruments - for all his urgency, Kenway neglected to mention what ailment, injury, or condition I’m to treat.

As the carriage slowly carries me off, I can’t help wondering what has happened. I’ve been called out to the estate in a medical capacity a few times - a few minor burns in the kitchen, a kitchenmaid who strained her back using one of those strange indoor water pumps when they were first put in, a footman who contrived to break a toe propping a door open while carrying a small rosewood side table, and a handful of more serious injuries among the farmhands and that Gist character. I’ve seen to Kenway himself too but never for anything more serious than a stitch or two and nothing Barrington couldn’t have managed alone - invitations of form and friendship rather necessity. This morning’s note had led me to believe this was just such a one - a way of asking me there for a few hours, for a hot, plentiful meal in the comfort of his warm home and in his always pleasant and enlightened company. 

Haytham Kenway and I met during our crossing on the _Providence_ , as the only two paying passengers on the merchant ship, and quickly bonded as seemingly the only two people of sense aboard her, her captain being a cruel, coward drunk. I once mentioned how little I thought of the ship’s surgeon’s medical manner and knowledge and in the long discussion that ensued we discovered how much of a mind we are on so many things. He was delighted at finding that I specialise in the care of women and omegas - the most immediate and practical way for me to work towards their protection, something I was surprised to find Kenway supports wholeheartedly. And though I have only the perfunctory understanding of this organisation he heads, I do know it has at least one high-placed omega in its ranks, so his is not just idle talk.

As soon as I arrive I’m politely but hurriedly ushered into a drawing-room and before I’ve even had time to put my things down and greet my friend, one of the footmen arrives with my habitual coffee.

“What is it, Haytham? Is it serious?”

“It may be more serious than I thought, John, but sit and have your coffee while I explain.”

I sit but he doesn’t sit with me, going over to stand near one of the windows instead, hands clasped behind his back, and for a while he doesn’t speak.

Finally, he launches into an involved tale about a special class of criminals, made prisoners on his instruction, of going to the arsenal to see them. Of noticing of of them in particular, a handsome but injured omega, of singling him out…

_What?!_

“Haytham-!”

He doesn’t even pause but forges on as though he himself needs to get the whole story out.

“So I took him with me and offered him a deal: his consent in return for his freedom. I’m not proud of it, John, but it happened and you need to know to understand. He accepted - I know it sounds hard but he would have been no worse of than if I’d never taken him. He made his choice freely.”

What am I hearing? Who is this man? The Haytham Kenway I know is a fellow advocate for the emancipation of women and omegas, not this vile, opportunistic sexual predator.

He has paused, possibly expecting another objection on my part but frankly I have no words and I’m not sure how to address this stranger before me. I suppose I should admire his courage at telling me at all, given he knows me, knows I’ve made it my life’s work to help and improve the condition of women and omegas, often misunderstood, mistreated, and defenceless in the face of the law. But I feel nothing but horror and _betrayal_ so heated it must be disguising the icy disappointment I know I must feel beneath it.

“I know you’re angry, John, but your anger is with me not with him. He needs your help. I fed him and did what I could for his injuries. He seemed so much better this morning but his health has declined all day and we put him to bed with a high fever not an hour ago.”

I set my coffee cup down and try to set aside the circumstances in order to focus on the patient.

“Did you ask him what might be wrong?”

“I did but he was very reticent to say. I did everything I could for him, John, but I… I couldn’t shake the feeling that he would fall ill. There must be something else, some hidden condition or injury that I sensed but couldn’t find. I thought… he might be pregnant.”

This time I lose my temper entirely.

“So help me, Haytham, if he’s in heat-!”

“He isn’t, I’m not quite _that_ despicable. But I took him from his intended… he’d be about two or three months along.”

Staring at my coffee cup, I fight the urge to leave and wash my hands of this.

I can feel Haytham’s gaze on me.

“You’ll like Shay. He’s only twenty-five and yet has already achieved-.”

I stand.

“Very well. I’ll see him. But I don’t appreciate you using my principles against me, Kenway, and you should know there’s no need.”

Haytham nods and stands.

“I’ll take you. He’ll be anxious if I’m not there to introduce you.”

We go up to Kenway’s own bedroom, which I’d never been in before, though I’ve seen most of it from the connecting dressing room, a semi-public space I’ve spent hours in, chatting with Haytham as he finished dressing before going out or changed into something more comfortable for a quiet dinner with me.

Barrington and a couple of maids and footmen are in the room, giving the alcove into which the brass four-poster bed is ensconced a wide berth as they bring in towels, fresh bedding, rearrange the furniture, communicating in low murmurs.

A nod from Kenway and they all leave, save Barrington who hangs back at the door.

The sleeping youth lying in the enormous bed is all cheekbones and bruises. Haytham draws up a chair, sits then reaches out to stroke the dark head and the boy slowly blinks awake.

“Shay, this is Dr John Meadows, a close friend of mine. John, Shay Cormac.”

Shay Cormac looks up at me nervously, inching closer to Kenway - seeking protection from one alpha against another. I should ask Kenway to leave us - _will_ ask him to - but until my patient is comfortable with me he needs the illusion of safety.

I pull up an armchair. Outside the alcove, I can hear the faint sounds of Barrington unpacking my bag and laying out my tools, something he’s done for me before.

“How did you come by such a cut, Master Cormac?”

“I fell.”

“I forgot to warn you, John, Shay is a master storyteller. Does it need stitches?”

I hold my hand up briefly before slowly reaching over to touch around the wound, a gash that cuts clean across his brow and down onto his cheek. A fearsome injury. This wasn’t the result of a fall down some stairs or even out of a tree. An great amount of force would have been necessary and he’s lucky to have survived such a blow to the head.

It’s a miracle the wound started closing at all and even now a glancing blow would likely reopen it. Yes, it could do with a few stitches only the edges are reddened and the flesh heated, especially around the wound. Generalised fever and a local inflammation. Putting stitches in would only aggravate things.

“It did but no point now unless it reopens. Does it hurt?”

“No, just pulls a little.”

“And itches?”

“Aye.”

Feeling as close as I can around the wound, I check the soundness of his skull and I think I feel a hairline fracture going from the supraorbital arcade up along the parietal bone.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“About a week - maybe ten days - ago, I think.”

He doesn’t know. A fall that should have killed him and he can’t tell me when it happened. He’s trying to extrapolate the information from the day of the event and today’s date but confusion with time and dates is a common lingering effect of concussions. I’ll ask him more about it when we’re alone.

“Well, I’ll give you a salve for it, but that’s all we can do for now. If it starts to hurt or if it reopens, let me know at once.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

I touch carefully touch around the tender-looking wound on his other cheek.

Beneath the blood, the bruising and the swelling, I can just make out two, almost three, marks. Knuckles. A bare-knuckled blow of such savagery that it has completely broken the flesh, caught between bone and bone.

“This must have made you see stars.”

“Aye.”

And aggravated the concussion that hadn’t cleared up yet. I can’t help a cold glance at Haytham.

“Now, Master Kenway said something about a bullet?”

Cormac nods wearily and we help him sit up.

The bullet moves slightly beneath my finger, caught under the edge of the scapula. The wound has started healing over the bullet but the flesh is heated here too, infection flaring up, and he must be in near constant pain.

“The bullet will have to come out. Are you up for it, Master Cormac?”

“Aye, and please call me ‘Shay’.”

“Very well, Shay. I’ll examine you first then we’ll get that bullet out.”

Haytham says a few words to his new charge then follows me to the table where my instruments are now precisely laid out.

“I’ll be downstairs.”

“Very well. Please ask Barrington if he’ll assist me later.”

He nods and leaves, followed by Barrington.

Going back to Cormac, I find him looking very apprehensive.

“Is something worrying you? Some other injury, perhaps?”

“I… Do you have to tell Master Kenway everything?”

I say nothing to this and eventually he continues tentatively.

“I don’t want him to worry.”

“He’s already worried.”

He looks quite downcast at this.

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong? Then we’ll do what is necessary to set you to rights and I’ll find a way to assuage Master Kenway’s concerns.”

Shay looks at me helplessly then nods.

“It’s my ribs.”

“Let’s have a look.”

He watches me closely and when I lift the shirt and see the bruising on his torso I understand why. Solid bruising in nearly every shade - yellow ones likely dating from his fall, a few darker ones and a very new blue-black and purple one over his solar plexus that testifies to a blow that must have knocked the breath from him.

“Where?”

He shows me and I feel along the bones carefully, sharply aware of the pain I’m causing him.

Yes, the fourth and fifth ribs on his left side cracked, the sixth broken clean through. Ridges along the fractures where the bones had broken before and started to set before this new break. Two ridges, two previous breaks.

Shay watches me, wearing the terrified, bashful look of a child caught in a lie.

“These have cracked again. When did you first break them?”

“A few months ago… In November.”

“And what happened?”

“I was… in an accident. Something fell on me.”

“And they started healing?”

“Aye, I think so. I had a couple of weeks rest, didn’t move too much.”

“And the second time?”

“When I fell.”

“And yet you don’t look particularly clumsy.”

He looks so comically downcast at this, it completely transforms his face.

“Not much rest after that. And now? Not another accident, surely.”

“No, just a fight.”

It suddenly occurs to me that Haytham, as head of his organisation, is probably less exposed than the other members but all the same, they must be in a dangerous line of business.

“They will heal if you let them but that means plenty of rest, several days in bed and very little movement for a long time after that.”

“Master Kenway-.”

“I’ll deal with Master Kenway.”

“Please don’t be angry with him.”

“I’m not. He’s taken good care of you and I’m sure he’ll continue to. Now, how is your breathing?”

Shallow and laboured. Part of it might be due to the broken ribs but combined with the fever, the chills that shake him and his evident exhaustion, I’m worried it points to something more. The slight wheeze in his lungs doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

I continue my examination, aware of the dark eyes always on me though he says nothing as I check his pulse, temperature and other vitals. He continues to be pliable and cooperative as I check his articulations and sound his body for hidden injuries.

I keep my smile fixed though my estimation of his condition worsens at an alarmingly steady pace.

I ask him a few general questions about his age and lifestyle and so on that he answers with varying degrees of forthrightness. He’s particularly elusive about his occupation but I think I know enough of Haytham’s to make tolerably accurate assumptions.

He does not appear to be pregnant - certainly not the three months Kenway suggested - but an absolute certainly would require a fuller examination and Cormac has neither the mental nor the physical strength for that.

“When was your last heat?”

“October, I guess. But I’m always irregular and I sometimes miss them.”

Over three months ago. The abuse the poor creature must have suffered and over so long a period, no wonder he’s barely alive.

“Why didn’t you tell Master Kenway you’re in such a state?”

“I thought… he might send me back if I was too much trouble and I don’t want him to worry.”

“Well. You need complete rest if you’re to get better. I’ll give you something for the fever, and the pain and I’ll have your dinner brought up. We’ll see to your shoulder when you’ve had a chance to rest.”

“Thank you, sir. Could I… see Master Kenway?”

“Are you sure you want to? I could tell him you’re resting.”

“No… please.”

“If you insist, I’ll bring him with me when I return later.”

“Thank you.”

“Very well, I’ll ask him to come up once I’ve spoken with him.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Soon I’m downstair with Haytham and when he offers me a drink I suddenly realise just how much I need one.

I gave Cormac thirty drops of laudanum. Should I have given him less? More? He likely needs more for the pain, especially if we’re to remove the bullet, but one grain of opium is a strong dose for a person in his weakened state.

Haytham is waiting, not daring to speak or ask, but I’m still trying to organise my thoughts and stifle a flare of anger.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a shadow behind me.

“Barrington, barley water with sugar and nothing stronger than beef tea, with perhaps a very small amount of vegetables stewed very soft.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll tell Cook.”

Kenway’s brow is now very slightly creased with worry.

“How is he, John? Could we wait a few days before taking the bullet out? He might feel stronger after a couple of days rest.”

“He likely won’t have a couple of days. He’s in a wretched state, Haytham. He’s lucky to be alive at all and he knows it.”

Haytham looks aghast.

“Are you sure? What’s wrong with him?”

Suddenly my outrage breaks out again.

“Where should I start? Should I start with the worst - the pneumonia and attendant fever that will likely carry him off - and finish by noting his generally weakened condition caused by prolonged exposure, malnourishment, undernourishment and anxiety? Or should I open with the concussion he sustained from the blow to his head that nearly cost him the sight in that eye and work my way down to his frostbitten feet? Or should I set things out chronologically, start with the ribs that were first fractured some three months ago, broken again since before they had time to fully knit together, and broken again yesterday so that they will never properly set? Or the intentional blows to his head and chest, not to mention the fact that someone evidently shot him in the back?”

“What? But that’s impossible! Yesterday we-.”

Something of my cold rage must show because he stops short and for a moment we just stare at each other.

_And yet…_

“Is it my fault, John?”

And yet what is clear from this overview is that Haytham is not to blame for these injuries. He and I still need to have words over his conduct but the hot anger I felt towards him suddenly deflates. A night in a cold cell would have killed Shay Cormac outright so what little life is left in him he owes to Kenway. But there might not be enough left to save him.

“You didn’t force him?”

“No! I bathed him, gave him dinner, and then we… He even-.”

He stops again. I’ve never known him not to finish his sentences.

“He didn’t need tiring out but if you’re not the one who punched him, knocked him on the head, shot him, then left him out in the cold to die, then you’re not primarily responsible for his condition.”

“How could I have missed the signs?”

“Because he hid them and he might not have fully realised them himself - the pain drowned out by fear, anxiety, cold, hunger, _pleasure_ ,” Kenway has the grace to look mildly repentant, “You made him feel just safe enough, long enough for his body to stop and take stock of its own state.”

I empty my glass, wincing slightly at the burn of the whisky as I swallow.

“He wants to see you. And we should pull out that bullet before he sleeps.”

Haytham nods but as we both stand, I hesitate.

“Haytham… I get a sense that this is all caught up in your particular business and I have no wish to pry. I’m not exactly sure what kind of arrangement you two have but he needs complete rest if he’s to have a chance of recovering. He can have no upsets at all, Haytham, and you must give him every reassurance. There is no point my trying to save him otherwise.”

“Every reassurance.”

Barrington is already upstairs, ready and waiting and he goes over to undress and prepare Cormac while I select my instruments and wash them in the hot water provided. I can hear Haytham’s soothing murmurs and Cormac’s quiet answers and by the time I join them, Cormac is settled in Haytham’s arms, looking absurdly content, considering.

But then I’ve seen this kind of thing before. I know what it can hide.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be careful but it will likely hurt.”

“Don’t worry about me, sir, I’ve done it before. I’ll manage.”

Kenway offers him a small rolled up towel and Cormac bites down on it then rests his forehead against Kenway’s shoulder and grips his arms.

He barely makes a sound throughout, keeping quite still as I make an incision. There’s fluid but fortunately its mostly clear, barely tainted with blood, but part of the bullet has lodged itself under the scapula and Cormac’s body becomes tense and clammy as I try to wrench it out. Finally, a scrape of bone and it comes free, and I drop it into the dish Barrington is holding for me, a wet towel ready in his other hand. After pressing the wound to empty and clean it, Barrinton helps me bandage Cormac’s chest. The poor child is still burning up with fever despite the antipyretic I administered earlier.

Cormac turns to take a long look at the bullet, then turns back and settles against Kenway, eyes closed, extenuated.

When I take his glass of barley water away, Barrington follows me.

“Has he eaten?”

“Yes, sir, I thought it best to feed him before the operation. He took one cup of beef tea with a few pieces of carrot and potato. He wouldn’t take a second.”

A nod and I add ten drops of laudanum to the barley water before taking it back.

“Here, drink as much as you can of this.”

His eyes on Kenway, he drains the glass.

“Could you manage another cup of beef tea?”

“I…” his gaze flickers to Haytham and he nods, “Aye.”

While Haytham supervises the food, Barrington and I clean and pack up my instruments, discussing Cormac’s symptoms and treatment in undertones.

Eventually, Haytham joins us, looking worn and discouraged.

“He’s asleep.”

The regret and concern seem genuine and whether Haytham’s protective attitude is dictated by alphic instinct or guilt, it _is_ useful given that the only kind of care that might save Cormac now requires all the resources of Haytham’s house, his staff and his wealth. If Cormac were not under the protection of one such as Haytham Kenway he would have no chance at all. I would have tried to save him all the same but it is far less disheartening to do so knowing there is some sliver of hope.

“I’ll have dinner served.”

“In the drawing room, Barrington.”

“Yes, sir.”

One last look at Cormac, still as a sleeping statue on a tomb, and Kenway and I make our way downstairs.

I’ve done all that I can for now , very nearly all that I can do, and it will likely not be enough.

This is what I now need to make Haytham understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Laudanum: tincture of opium - highly addictive but one of the very few medicines they knew of at the time that actually worked.
> 
> Beef tea: cooked beef extract. Yes, it's more 19th century than 18th century but whatever.


	19. Haytham | Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greatly weakened, Shay finally cracks under the strain and confides in Haytham.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter of Part I! 
> 
> Still lots of angst in this one but what can I say? Things have to get bad so they can get better.
> 
>  
> 
> (Une pensée pour Simone Veil que nous perdons aujourd'hui et qui à tant fait pour les femmes.)

**HAYTHAM**

_Kenway House, New York, December 1755_

 

Glancing across the table at John, I watch him push a piece of carrot around his plate. He’s eaten barely more than I have and I’ve only been pretending.

We’ve barely talked - _really_ talked - since the meal began. Most of it went into a council-of-war-like meeting that included the entire top echelon of the household staff - Barrington, Cook, the housekeeper, the under-butler, even the first footman - to whom John gave instructions for Shay’s diet and care. Barrington will coordinate these efforts and a great part of his main duties will be devolved to his under-butler and the first footman until Shay recovers.

John was crisp and matter-of-fact while they were all here but the moment they left his mask fell away and he’s looked weary and dejected.

I’d never seen him as angry as he was today. Oh, he can become animated when he speaks of things he’s passionate about, but even then there’s something of his rationality and objective restraint.

I deserve his anger. If Shay had been anyone _but_ Shay, if I felt just an iota less strongly about him than I do, perhaps I could feel anger at myself too.

“Will he live, John?”

John gives me a long look, cold and detached.

“I cannot say. There’s very little medicine can do for him now.”

“Could you stay here until he’s stronger, John? There’s a guest room made up and ready. I’ll have my people fetch anything you need and you can have the use of one of the coaches to get to and from your surgery.”

He hesitates but finally sighs and nods.

Thank heavens for this at least.

John has been leery of my influence and the organisation he knows I head since our time on the _Providence_ and its attack by Assassins who were clearly after me. His reluctance stems from natural wariness, a stubborn sense of independence and a fear that he’ll be turned aside from his lifelong commitment to the underprivileged, and particularly women and omegas, and reduced to being “a fashionable doctor with a cause”. Nothing I’ve said has yet overcome these scruples and I’d worried that my behaviour with Shay might actuate a fatal break between us. All is not lost. Not for John Meadows, and not for Shay.

I’ve barely had time to thank him when Barrington appears to tell us that Shay is becoming restless and has been asking for me.

“Is he awake?”

“No, sir, still asleep. Nightmares, I think.”

I nod and get to my feet.

“Barrington, Dr Meadows has agreed to stay and help us care for Shay. Please make him comfortable.”

Shay is sleeping fitfully but he quietens when I lay a hand on his head.

The rest of the room is lit with candles and the varying light of the fireplace but the alcove is dark, lit by a solitary candle whose flame warms the nearby orange blossom, releasing its scent in the air. I’ve never bothered with the drapes of my canopy bed and I now see them pulled down for the first time, cocooning Shay in heavy indigo silk and sheltering him from the noise, the light, drafts and even from sight.

John says little can be done for Shay, but whatever good money and influence can do, Shay will have it.

I didn’t see it. I didn’t see how important he is and I didn’t see that all this time I thought I was binding him to me, he was slipping away from me, like sand or water through my fingers. I don’t know how to hold him back.

I remember his fever-lit eyes when we spoke earlier, before dinner.

_“I have to tell you something.”_

_“We can talk tomorrow, hawkling, just rest for now.”_

And the look he gave me then, so sweet and mild and forgiving, it made me feel the whole depth of my hypocrisy. I suddenly realised just how unwell I think him - how unwell he _knows_ himself to be - that he may not have a tomorrow.

_“It’s important.”_

_“Very well, hawkling. After dinner, when we’re alone?”_

And his small nod and the slow flutter of his dark lashes as he drifted into sleep.

What will he tell me?

I’m glad he’s finally decided to confide in me but my mind has been boiling over with the myriad things he might be hiding. The Rite was practically decapitated before my arrival, all its most prominent senior members picked off by the Assassins and Monro and I have worked very hard to replace the Rite’s leadership but we’re still vulnerable, an attack against any of our top people now could cripple us - William Johnson, in particular, would be irreplaceable.I rely on the Royal Navy to carry my messages abroad and the Order’s interests as a whole are closely tied to those of the Company and Shay, being a pirate, might be privy to some scheme to ambush one or the other or both. Achilles Davenport and Liam O’Brien have never spared means or energy when it comes to sabotaging us. Even if I _did_ spend all my time trying to divine their schemes, I couldn’t guard against them all.

John doesn’t exclude that Shay may be less than three months pregnant and I only have Shay’s word that he hasn’t been with O’Brien in that time. I don’t think he lied to me but even if he did, I would understand. In the hours since the possibility first occurred to me, I’ve had time to realise that not only would I understand, I wouldn’t care. I knew he was Liam’s intended when I made him my offer and I would still keep him if he were carrying O’Brien’s child, if he were willing to stay. What can it matter? Liam and I are both alphas and we both have Assassin’s blood. What difference would it make? My paternal instincts are weak - I would be just as happy to raise a dark-eyed child like Shay or a blue-eyed one like Liam O’Brien as I would be a grey-eyed one.

Shay’s body tenses then he startles awake.

“Haytham!”

“Shay? It’s all right, Shay. Just a nightmare.”

His alarm doesn’t fade, however, and he looks up at me anxiously.

“Did you see Liam?”

“No, hawkling. You’ve only been asleep a couple of hours.”

I smooth his hair back from his face and he calms almost instantly, leaning in to the caress and smiling at me. I’m not sure how much longer I can stand watching him burn away like this, consumed by nerves and fever.

“I like Gist and Weeks.”

“I’m glad.”

I start to gently card his hair again, wondering. He’s told me this before. Is this confusion due to the fever or perhaps the concussion? He hasn’t moved at all, still resting quietly, and he sounds perfectly calm.

“I’d seen Jack Weeks before.”

“Before today?”

_Was it really only today?_

“Aye. At Mount Vernon.”

A prickle of goosebumps down my arm as I have another flash of premonition and wait for him to continue.

“He was there at the party with James Wardrop and Samuel Smith… the night I killed Laurence Washington.”

_Good God!_

“I didn’t see the point of it. He didn’t even have the Manuscript or the Box anymore, he’d already given those to Smith and Wardrop, and he was so sick he would have died within a month anyway. But Liam made me promise I would, said I could prove my loyalty to Achilles if I got it right. And I was desperate to become a Master Assassin.”

I’m trying to remember everything I know about Washinton’s death - it was before my time. Yes, it was at Mount Vernon; yes, Jack was there; and yes, they had all met to decide what to do about the Manuscript and Box. But we’d always assumed that Liam O’Brien was responsible, he was sighted in the area at the time, Shay might have heard the details from him.

But didn’t everybody comment on how clean Washington’s death was? Absent the usual trail of bodies Liam O’Brien usually leaves behind. And the guards did see the Assassin jump off a cliff to make his escape _by ship_. At Fort Williams too, where Wardrop died, the guards caught a glimpse of the Assassin before he disappeared over the wall. I have the papers somewhere downstairs, I’ll need to check them for details, but I recall thinking that the description did not fit Liam O’Brien. Could it really have been Shay?

And - _Franklin_! Wasn’t Franklin in Albany for the Congress the day Wardrop died?!

“Shay, Smith and Wardrop, was that you too?”

He nods, resigned.

“I hated doing it. They weren’t fighters, it felt cowardly and dishonourable. But I had to get the artefacts. I thought that if I could just find one of the Pieces of Eden that it would all make sense, that it would justify what I’d done. That Liam and Achilles would finally be proud of me.”

He looks up at me, his gaze clear and searching and resigned. He reaches for my hand and squeezes it gently and I gather it up between both of mine.

“Are you angry?”

_Am I?_

“No, Shay. You’re an Assassin, I’ve always known you might have killed Templars. I’m just surprised it was those.”

I can’t tell if he believes me or if he even heard me. His eyes are just yearning and suffering but this time we both know I can’t help him to forget. Even so, I lean to press a slow kiss onto his mouth and Shay grips my shirt tightly.

No, nothing has changed.

“I’m so sorry, Haytham. I didn’t know.”

He tells me of chasing after Samuel Smith in the far reaches of the North Atlantic, of infiltrating Fort Williams to kill Wardrop, of telling Franklin they’d come on Johnson’s behalf, of the lightening rods and the experiment, of an image projected out of the box - a globe with several points marked on it, one of which he immediately recognised. A convent in Lisbon.

“Wait, Shay, just give me a moment.”

_Lisbon._

I know what he’s going to tell me - John Meadows already read the whole story in the breaks in his bones like a Shang dynasty oracle. Sure enough, a cave beneath a cathedral, a Piece of Eden or something like, disappeared and destroyed at the first touch, and then the earthquake. A race down streets that moved and changed beneath this feet, scrabbling around and over obstacles while avoiding falling debris, a building collapsed onto him, another all around him, crushed beneath a table when the floor beneath it became a wall, flung out of a window, bruised when he lost his footing running along the side of a collapsed tower before throwing himself into the rolling sea. A lucky escape to the waiting ship and the voyage back to the colonies, plagued by the pain of all his injuries and the burden of guilt at having survived a disaster he thinks he caused. His return to a homestead whose peaceful calm offended his nerves, still overwrought by the hell and destruction of Lisbon, the confrontation with Achilles and-

“They wouldn’t listen to me, any of them. Achilles, Hope, Liam. They weren’t there in Lisbon but they wouldn’t listen to me. I knew Achilles wouldn’t change his mind. He knew about Mackandal and Port-au-Prince and he still couldn’t _see_. So that night I went into Achilles study and I took the manuscript.”

_Oh Shay…_

“It was the only way.”

He sounds lost, pleading to be understood. I press my forehead to his, all my nerves strained by the weight of all I should have known and didn’t know, all I should have done and didn’t do. How could all of this have happened without my noticing?

“You were right to, hawkling. This is all my fault, Shay, I stopped looking for the box and manuscript.”

“To use?”

“Not to use. That was my mistake. I thought that because I had no use for them they didn’t matter. But it was always my responsibility to try to take them back and keep them safe.”

He continues his story of being found out by Achilles who’d evidently been expecting him, another bitter exchange before he’s pushed out of yet another window, a desperate attempt to escape until he’s trapped and cornered on a cliff top - another stand-off, enticements, threats.

“I was ready to jump. I was ready to die to destroy the manuscript, but just as I was about to jump, that bullet knocked me over the edge.”

“Who shot you?”

“Liam, I think. If I hadn’t turned that bullet might have killed me.”

Yes. A quick death if it had hit his heart, a desperate death drowning in his own blood and seawater if it had hit a lung, or a long agonising wait before bloodless and hypothermia carried him off into unconsciousness then death. Oh, I will taste O’Brien’s blood before I die. Even if he kills me first, I won’t die before I taste his life force and feel it die inside me.

Shay watches me, his soul smouldering in his eyes, watching me from within a body that’s dying all around it, that neither my blood nor O’Brien’s can save now.

“How did you survive all that, Shay?”

It’s less a question than an expression of wonder and dismay but Shay answers it quite seriously.

“Some people found me and took care of me. Then I came to New York, I thought it would be easier to hide the manuscript here.”

“You still had it?!”

“Aye. Don’t know how.”

“Then Liam found you…”

I understand it all now. O’Brien’s attitude and Shay’s, the way this changes the entire balance of power between Achilles and I. I understand too what my offer meant to Shay and why he was so desperate to keep to its terms.

Raising his hand to my lips, I kiss the scraped and bruised knuckles gently.

“I’m so sorry, Shay…”

“Haytham? If I tell you where I hid the manuscript, promise you won’t let Achilles have it?”

My whole being recoils at this.

“You can tell me when you’re stronger, Shay. When you’re stronger we’ll retrieve it together.”

He just shakes his head slightly.

No, that won’t do. But I cannot bring myself to listen. Shay watches me, he understands.

“I could write it down.”

Fetching my diary and quill, I place the latter in his hand and hold the former open for him.

He laboriously pens out a few lines that I barely glance at before tearing out the page, folding it and tucking it away.

“I’ll put it in my safe.”

He nods, smiling faintly and closes his eyes, dropping back against the pillows as his whole body goes limp with relief.

I still have his hand in mine and I feel him slipping away and my blood runs cold. Drifting back into wakefulness, he looks at me.

“When I saw Jack Weeks, I thought he was a ghost. I see ghosts everywhere. I thought he was a ghost. Sometimes I think you’re a ghost too.”

“I’m real, Shay. So is Jack.”

“I could have killed him, or you, without knowing. Like all the others.”

“You flatter yourself, hawkling. I’m not that easy to kill.”

A flare of real mirth at this then he closes his eyes a moment, as though the intensity of that spark of emotion was too much for him.

“Haytham? Could you take care of the _Morrigan_? I don’t want Liam or anyone to destroy her.”

“Of course, Shay. Anything.”

“She’s at Fort Arsenal. You could take the Fort. I think I remember where the defences are weakest. And only Liam could have changed the password so it probably hasn’t changed.”

He’s too tired to keep his eyes open and his voice grows weaker as he talks until it's barely more than a breath and when he stops speaking he’s already asleep. I think the greater part of his consciousness dropped away long ago.

As I watch him sleep, I can feel that small folded bit of paper burning a hole in my pocket.

He doesn’t wake again and when Meadows comes to check on him in the early hours of the morning, Shay cannot be roused.

 

-{ End of Part I }-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Company: The East India Trading Company. 
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 
> Thank you for sticking with the story this far! I know it's a bit of a strange storytelling structure - a kind of back-to-front slow burn, with all the burn at the beginning and all the slow at the end...  
> Looking back it's taken 19 chapters to get through about 24 hours, which is slow going, but all the mistakes and misunderstandings that come out of these 24 hours set the foundation for everything that follows. 
> 
> Anyway, things start looking up for poor Shay in Part II but they take a decided turn for the worse for poor Liam. 
> 
> Thanks again for all the support and comments, hope you'll continue with me for Part II!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Of Pirates and Pregnancies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12986949) by [salanaland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salanaland/pseuds/salanaland)




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